digressions—and fake slips and asides — that you must have unusually clear arteries, which should be something to be thankful to find out about. And then — joke flat, for you’re not smiling,” and he said “No no, it was all right, just maybe I couldn’t find anything funny now . but what else, the serious?” and she said “To write back; I don’t see how you can avoid it. What to say to her, though, right now I don’t know. That’s for you, as to how you feel. But one question you should ask yourself is why you’re so sure the boy’s yours.” “I just know he is; the timing sixteen years ago; her pretenses during it — at the early stages, and now in this letter, meaning . . meaning what? This has also confused me. That it just seems authentic, this letter. I mean, there does seem to be something askew with her in it, the way she puts things. Or maybe I’m wrong; it’s just her way of putting things — she’s nervous, self-conscious, was always turning away, not looking at me, bashful, if you can believe it; frightened, even, though she now says she can be aggressive — I’m sure that’s what she meant — and fierce. Fooling herself there, I think. But, but, just by the way she says she kept it from me and is now revealing it. And because I doubt anyone could make up a letter like this, or if anyone could, she wasn’t among them or was the very last to all that, I’m saying, smacks the truth—of it. I’m repeating myself and also still not being clear,” and she said “No, I understand, and how could you not be? What I’m thinking now though is why you’re so sure she’s even had a second son. It’s possible she has gone a little over the who-knows-what and it isn’t simply nerves and self-consciousness, since we don’t know what’s happened to her, like drugs she’s taken or illnesses she’s gone through and relationships she’s had, in sixteen years. Or tragedies even — the loss of her first and only son, though that’s carrying it too far. But she might only be imagining it or, as she said about the boy to his alleged deceased nonbiological father, is trying to get back at you for some reason. Though why would she be, since from what you’ve told me and this letter says she was the one who cut you off. But I’d look into the letter more deeply, read it for keys. Maybe she’s getting back at you with this possible birth lie for originally getting her in bed and impregnating her when she didn’t want to, at least the pregnancy,” and he said “I don’t know, but I have to admit she wasn’t very keen on sleeping with me. More like, if I really had to or sort of insisted — her meekness again — she’d get on the bed, hike up her dress and spread her legs and I should just go ahead. But there’s more validity in what you say about the pregnancy, since I did trick her. I should have pulled out of her as we’d agreed — I’m saying, the first time. The second and third, if there was a third, I assume she was protectively prepared, or else she didn’t do anything because she already knew she was pregnant. But she wasn’t a vindictive type or a conniver and nothing in the letter shows it. In fact, just the opposite comes out,” and she said “Why, where’s it say that?” looking at the letter, and he said “I thought I heard it come through, but I won’t press it; I’m not as good a reader as you. But what she says here I’m convinced is the truth, though if it really came down to it I’d want a blood test to prove it,” and she said “Do you know what they cost? There was something in the — no, a doctor acquaintance, Debby, and she was talking about it, or someone for some reason asked her, when I was with her, and the figures stuck. Maybe it was originally a newspaper article and this person wanted it explained or couldn’t believe the costs. But Debby went into it: more than a thousand; that is, if you want ninety-nine-point-nine accuracy. It’s a very complex foolproof process which no medical insurance covers, so you really have to want the tests. And you need their consent, mother and child’s, and they have to take the tests the same day as you and their blood flown to the lab air-express if the lab’s here, or yours to theirs same way, or maybe theirs is taken the day before yours so it can reach your lab the next day, but which has to be another hundred in costs: flying blood,” and he said “Then that’s another matter, which we’ll maybe come to someday, but I’m saying I believe what she says is so and that I have to deal with it. And if it isn’t so — now I mean that if she does have another child but it isn’t mine; or what she says is a bit exaggerated I don’t know what I mean by that; I know it’s something but I forget what — then I’ll find out somehow in my letters to him. But I will write her back saying the kid should write and I might even put something in the letter for him,” and she said “For no furtive purposes, believe me, or that this is the wise wife telling the obtuse spouse what a mistake she thinks he might be making, but I’m still a bit suspicious. Out of the blue, sixteen years, this boy opens a book and his papa drops out? — excuse me, but it doesn’t even seem a trace fishy to you? Maybe it’s the truth — taller tales have been — but it could also be she wants you to start kicking in for him — private school, for instance, if he has a problem academically or his public school or school district does. College — he’s getting to that age and may even be so precocious that this is his senior high school year and he’s thinking of going to Stanford or Amherst or Yale. But big bucks and the living’s high there. Or she comes upon one review, sees you’re teaching in a good school, has read that some college profs make a hundred thousand or more and thinks you were sharp and smart so maybe you’re among this elite and feels it’ll be no hardship for you to help her with some serious bills because she’s being evicted or had medical expenses she’s up to her arrears in, and so on — the last wasn’t bad, was it? and it wasn’t anything I heard,” and he said “As I told you, she wasn’t like that and nothing she wrote suggests she’s changed. She hated people who squeezed money or promises out of you. Hated advertisers, salesmen, promoters, professional handshakers, anyone pushy and aggressive and self-interested and unctuous, if I recall, is the word she used, but who wanted something from you like that. In a way, me at the time — that’s what she said about me: pushy, sexually needy, other things, and I was. Those days, nothing was going to stop me from trying to get the babe in bed and once in it or sitting on the edge of it with a piece of her clothing unbuttoned or off — even a shoe — from being even more forceful in frigging her. And once in her I sure as hell wasn’t going to pull out — except maybe to quickly stick it back in some other way — and dimish my good time. Okay, that was me then, now I don’t have to. I’m married, we can go for days without doing it if we want to, though we don’t seem to — both of us; it’s not just me. But sixteen years ago, or really since I was around eighteen, if she let me stick it in or didn’t fight me off hard enough to stop me from getting in her, then screw it — apt phrase, right? — I left it to her to take care of the rest of it, meaning her own pleasure and the birth control and after-sex wipeaway, etcetera, though I might provide the handkerchief if my pants were near. My satisfaction, once it got under way, was paramount. You don’t like what I just said, though I know I’ve said it before to you in various ways, but what can I say? Now I wouldn’t act like that for sure if I were single, and I didn’t, I think, when I first met you. I remember I’d decided to change my approach to fit my age and probably, without admitting it, my existent sex drive. But your face is saying something; what?” and she said “Nothing. You came on plenty strong with me then but it was all right. I knew what I was doing, which isn’t a criticism of her. She was about ten years younger than I when you met her, you’ve said, though with a kid, and it was a different and I think much looser time then all around and maybe people, even intelligent ones, thought like that: ‘Because I want another baby or am going to have another one some day, what’s the difference if it’s with him or someone else or even with my husband again, so long as the man seems to have good genes? It still comes out of me.’ But I still think if I had been her age and without protection our first night and certainly if I was still cohabitating with my husband I would have clawed you off or grabbed your balls and squeezed them till they crunched if you had somehow got your stiff in without my permission or with my permission but I suddenly had second explicitly articulated thoughts about it and you refused to withdraw.” “Anyway,” he said, “looking at it all — and I know I didn’t answer half your questions — in the end what’s the harm? She only wants me to have a minimal relationship with him now — by mail. Maybe sometime later a phone call or a meeting, something I’d only do — the meeting — if I felt sure he was mine, and unless I get us all to take those blood tests, which I’m not about to, I don’t see how I could. I don’t know what I’ll write to her but it’ll all come out when I write it and I promise I’ll be careful with my words.” He started to write her that night, then thought he’s only writing her to get through to the kid, so just write him, and started a new letter, saying who he is—“A friend of your mother’s. We knew each other years ago, which she’s of course told you, though I never met your father, who I understand passed away and which I was very sorry to hear”—what he does for a living, his family—“We’ve a daughter who’s just started to walk and who seems quite bright, lots of clear words and a few communicated impressions: ‘Look, bird! See, squirrel!’ I’m not kidding. Early on kids talk like that, just verbs and nouns and commands, and not ‘squirrel’; ‘dog’ “—and that “I heard from your mother you’d like me to write. I’d be happy to get a letter back telling things about yourself: what you like to do, school, job if you have one — I started working two to three hours a day and all day Saturday when I was thirteen, not recommended if one wants to get good grades, which I always wanted but never got except in music and art and if spelling had been its own subject, then I also would’ve got it in that”—his interests, friends, any pets? what he likes to read—“I’m assuming you do, no problem if not”—and so on. “Please give your mother my deepest regards.” No reply from the boy. Month later he wrote the woman saying he wrote Timothy same day he got her letter and he hasn’t received an answer. “In something like this the first thing I always say is I hope everything’s all right (sometimes it can be illness and even worse, heaven forbid). That said and everyone’s in good health and neither of you is going through comparable problems in other matters (fiscal, residential, social, etc.) then maybe he’s even shyer than you thought, not that I’m saying you don’t know your own son or that I have some special insight into his behavior because of this one action. (I’m afraid I’m being extraguarded here, not wanting to step in your terrain and feeling I’ve no right to draw conclusions about him, and I don’t. I don’t pretend to know him in any way other than from what you’ve said about him, but let’s face it, as you like to say, or did a couple of times in your letter — and I didn’t mean to make you self-conscious about that; it’s really nothing. Damn, I forgot what I was going to say, so don’t look for the closed parenthesis. But something about parents, because they’re so close to their kids, often not being the best judges of them, which is an old notion but seems new to a new parent no matter how old he is and which I’m sure will be true of me too with my child (Fanny,