The Photograph

"Mom, isn't this Grandma?"  Brooke asked as she handed a photograph to her mother.

Busy going through other old photos, Brooke's mother leaned over to take the picture from her daughter.

"Yes," she said, then furrowed her brow.

"Who's that with her?" Brooke asked.

"I have no idea.  It's certainly not Grandpop." She idly tossed the photograph back to her daughter, then turned to continue sorting through the photographs in her lap.

Brooke looked at the picture again.  Her grandmother stood tall, slender, and was surprisingly striking in appearance. It was not the way Brooke was accustomed to seeing her.  The man beside her was a young pilot.  A hat sat on his head at a rakish angle.  Both were looking into the camera as an electricity seemed to flow between them through their hands that hung clutched at their sides.

"I wonder who he is?  Aren't you the least bit curious?" asked Brooke.

Brooke's mother chortled, an odd sound that existed somewhere between a laugh and a choke.  "I gave up long ago trying to figure out your grandmother. Why don't you ask her when you see her Wednesday?"

Brooke loved visiting her grandmother every Wednesday at the Harvest Home Retirement Center.  It broke the long drudgery of high-school classes and endless homework.  She never saw it as a chore, though sometimes it got ponderous.  Now, she became excited at the prospect.

For almost a week, the photograph burned a hole in Brooke's purse.  She was dying to discover the identity of the young man.  Finally, mercifully, the day she regularly visited her grandmother at the Center came.

Brooke brought her usual brownies and set them on the table as she entered her grandmother's room.  It wasn't much of a room, barely large enough to hold a bed, bureau, and small table that was filled to overflowing with a variety of plants. It may have been small, but her grandmother maintained an immaculate appearance.  In one corner was a rocking chair, which her grandmother occupied at the moment.

"Thank you, sweetie," her grandmother said, as she always did.  "You know I love your brownies."

Brooke could contain herself no longer. "Grandma, who is this man?" Brooke blurted out the question as she walked over to her grandmother and pressed the photograph into her hand.

A sea of emotion swept over her grandmother's face and she stopped rocking, but only for a moment.  Then her kindly, yet stoic expression returned.  She handed the photo back to Brooke and simply smiled.

"You're not going to tell me, are you?"

Her grandmother leaned toward Brooke and crooked her finger to get Brooke to lean closer, as if they were involved in a conspiracy.

"Let me tell you a secret that you must carry with you the rest of your life," she began.

Brooke leaned forward, riveted.

"Every woman, no matter how old, must have a little mystery in her life."