"I want my brother to open the door," I said.
Truett nodded slowly, as though this were a reasonable request, and as though he received it often, which perhaps he did. "And if he does?"
"Then I want to say the right thing."
"Well, I can't promise the second part," Truett said. "That's on you. I'll see about the door." He turned his big head to Oren. "And you? Same as every year?"
"Same as every year," Oren said.
"What's same as every year?" I asked.
"He always asks for a full night's sleep," Truett said. "Thirty-six years, the boy's never had one."
"That's not true. I used to ask for a Super Nintendo."
"For about four years," Truett said. "Then it's been sleep ever since." He squeezed us both. "All right. Look at Dylan. Dylan's going to count to three, and on three you're going to think about the best Christmas you ever had."
Dylan said, "One. Two."
On two, I tried to think about the best Christmas I ever had, and the one that came to mind was the year I was eight, when Torben woke me up at four in the morning and we crept downstairs in our socks and played chess by the light of the tree with the white knight still on the board, and he let me win, and pretended he hadn't. And it hurt so much, suddenly and without warning, that I made a noise. And Oren, on the other side of Santa, must have heard it, because he leaned forward around Truett's belly to look at me, and his orange hat fell off, and he tried to catch it, and missed, and it landed in the fake snowdrift, and he said a word you should not say in front of Santa, and Truett laughed so hard his whole body shook, and I laughed too, and Dylan said, "Three."
That is the picture. I have it on my refrigerator now, so I can describe it exactly. Truett is in the middle with his head thrown back and his mouth open in a roar of laughter, gold tooth shining. Oren is bent sideways around him, hatless, hair sticking up, one arm still stretched toward the snowdrift, his face caught in an expression of total betrayal. And I am on the left, with my eyes squeezed shut and my mouth wide open, laughing, and my hand pressed flat against the zipper pocket of my coat, and if you look very closely you can see that my eyes are also wet. It is the least flattering picture anyone has ever taken of me. It's also the only picture of me from that whole year that I would save from a fire.
"That's the one," Truett said, wiping his eyes with a velvet cuff. "Don't let him take another one, Dylan. That's the one."