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dated: Merry Christmas 1985; Happy Birthday 1987. Loraine had shown Dallas the closet the day after David’s funeral, and he remembered the way she had stared blankly at all the brightly wrapped gifts, still awed, perhaps, by her husband’s great need to enter and enrich his daughter’s life over the long years from the grave.
    Dallas found Dawn swinging in the back yard, her white-sneakered feet straight out in front of her. She didn’t quite have the hang of pumping but was doingthe best she could. When she saw her uncle, the little girl scuffed to a stop and ran up to meet him. “Pow!” she said, poking him in the forehead with her index finger when he picked her up.
    “How old are you?” he said.
    “Two old.”
    “I’m the one that’s too old, you knucklehead. Besides, you’re three old today. Don’t you know your own birthday?”
    Loraine then appeared at the screen door and studied her brother-in-law wearily. She was still in her bathrobe. Actually, it looked like it might have been David’s. “You again,” she said, holding the door open for Dallas to come in without having to set his niece down.
    “That’s a nice hello after you don’t see me for a month.”
    Loraine cocked her head and frowned at him suspiciously. “You were here last night in case you forgot. Three in the morning.”
    Dallas did not know whether to believe her or not. He had no recollection of visiting his sister-in-law last night, but then he had next to no recollection of last night. For some reason though, when he first saw her standing there on the other side of the screen, he had imagined—could it have been a memory?—that she had been wearing a nightgown, the shadowy outline of her breasts just visible behind the fabric. Dallas tried to think why he should have imagined such a sight. “What would I have been doing here,” he asked, genuinely curious.
    “You were drunk. I told you to get lost. You really don’t remember?”
    “Did I have my teeth?”
    Loraine shot him a pained look that contained little sympathy. “Not again.…”
    Dallas nodded, pulling a chair from the kitchen table, and sat, the little girl still on his lap. Dawn pulled up her dress to show him her panties, which featured an embroidered pig. She leaned back as far as she could, her knees high in the air, so he could have the full benefit of the pig. “Will you take me to Chickey Fried Chicken?”
    “You mean the Kentucky Colonel? All the way to Schenectady?”
    Dawn nodded eagerly and smoothed her dress back down.
    “At times I still can’t believe you and David were brothers,” Loraine said.
    “Uncle Dallas says it’s my birfday.”
    “How would he know? He doesn’t even know where his teeth are.” Loraine squinted at him. “What are those in your mouth?”
    “Spares. You mean it’s not her birthday?”
    “You insisted the same thing last night. It isn’t till the middle of the month.”
    “And I had my teeth?”
    “It was three in the morning, Dallas. I don’t remember. Though I think I would have noticed if you didn’t.”
    Since there now appeared to be a consensus that today was not her birthday, Dawn squirmed down from her uncle’s lap and went to her mother, clutching her robe with one hand, inserting the other, nearly the whole fist, in her own mouth.
    “Come back here.”
    “No,” the little girl said, coyly refusing to look at him.
    “What was that on your underwear?”
    “Pig,” said Dawn through her fist.
    “I don’t believe it,” Dallas said, but his niece refused to take the bait.
    “Go back outside if you’re going to sulk,” her mother said. “And take your hand out of your mouth.”
    When Dawn didn’t obey, Loraine removed it. “Don’t want to go outside,” Dawn whined, her eyes filling with tears. “It’s my birfday.”
    “Thanks a lot,” Loraine said.
    “Come here,” Dallas clapped his hands. “Be my girl.” But instead the child ran outside and let the screen door slam behind her.