née Francine, and it’s been suggested, for obvious reasons except the big overlooked ones [force of habit and we like it] that we go back to the née one or call her, if we insist on an abbreviated or just less formal name and one we don’t like, Franny). But have I gone too far in even saying what I just did about Timothy and you? Talk about self-consciousness (mine)! This whole thing, quite truthfully, has catapulted me into a tumultuous hazy maze (and also into blowhard overprosy writing just witnessed). So where was I? And I’m not saying you’re one of the parents unable to judge her child sometimes because you two are so close (I don’t even know how much you are but I get a feeling of it and fine, fine, why shouldn’t you be?). But if Timothy’s had a change of mind about contacting me or wanting to be contacted, that’s okay, but please let me know. That’s probably all I should have said. Most sincerely, and always my best to you and Tim.” He showed his wife what he wrote, said “You think I should’ve called him Timothy, or maybe just change the ‘Tim’ to ‘him’; I can do that with a correction tab,” and she said “Why are you diving in headfirst like this?” and he said “What do you mean?” “Listen, the boy didn’t answer you, so wait till he does,” and he said “But what do you mean about diving in headfirst?” and she said “You’re not being deliberative, prudent, patient, even the least bit skeptical; you’re being impetuous, precipitous, reckless, even foolhardy,” and he said “Adjectives, adjectives, all adjectives; fuck them and adverbs.” “Okay,” she said, “then this, since I can see what I said made you pissed: what’s the big rush? All right, not ‘big,’ but just ‘rush, rush.’ If he doesn’t answer in another month or two, he’ll still only be fifteen or at the most on the cusp of sixteen, but still young, with plenty of years left to begin to get to know you, and in the interim you can decide the next thing to do regarding him, which might be to do nothing. But you’re acting like this waiting for his letter the last month. You’ve been all hyped up and anxious about it as if it’s a fait accompli or something that he’s your son. In other words, a given, indisputable, no q’s asked, and you’re dying to hear from him. Perhaps, as you once intimated, to find some signs in his letters that he is who she says he is. Maybe by the way he writes or what he says or even his handwriting and signature, if he isn’t already on a WP, and then oh boy, wait till the photos of him come in: ‘Look, Sal, my chin, my nose, my lobes.’ But that he’s yours unequivocally. It’s as if you’re not already a father. And that you’re forty-seven but unmarried, or married to a barren woman or you’re the one at reproductive fault and you’re desperate to go down in life as having fulfilled some universal or divine purpose and that’s to leave a child behind with your seed in it, even if all this information about your fathership comes from someone you haven’t seen in sixteen years, only was with two or three days — you two will never get that one straight — and has a history of being untrustworthy or considerably unreliable and for the most part simply not there. But there’s Fanny and in a year or two we’ll probably have another child or start to and if you want three I’ll go for three. Rather, if we want a third we’ll have it, and we’ve said we do, but we’ll determine that for certain after we have two. But what can you do for this boy now that he’s fifteen or for all we know soon to be or already sixteen?” and he said “No, it would be early summer when she and I met; that’d have him born in March or April, so he’s only a few months into being fifteen.” “Money for tuition and things like sleepaway summer camp and braces we can’t afford,” she said, “and I won’t let you legally adopt him since that’ll cut into what we want to give to the children we conceive. If you want to send him a few dollars — a few hundred — and it’s from time to time, but money for his health or health insurance mostly, okay. I wouldn’t even send this letter, though I won’t do anything to stop you, and I certainly wouldn’t write another one if you don’t get one back from this one or the last. Take their not sending back as a sign, not that either of us believes in that,” and he said “Truth is, but I told you this before,” and she said “How would I know?” and he said “That I remember how much I wanted it to be true when she first said she was pregnant and then with that photo I told you she sent me and letters about her pregnancy, or maybe there was just one letter or two. And truth too is that I feel good now at the possibility of having a second kid in him. It won’t stop me from wanting a second one with you and if we want, a third too, but that should do it. But if he’s connected to me in the way she says then even at this late date in his life — fifteen’s not late but you know what I mean — I have to take whatever responsibility’s mine, all of which I’ll find out what it is.” “You don’t. She kept it from you. You’re off the hook as she said, or whatever so-called so hard to come by colloquialism she used—‘out of the woods,’ ‘in the clear,’” and he said “Blood. If the kid’s blood, then that’s all there is to it, whatever’s happened and no matter how much time’s elapsed, though call me a misled sentimental sap.” “You’re full of shit,” and she left the room. “Sally?” but she didn’t answer. He mailed the letter and came back and said “I mailed it,” and she said “So?” and wouldn’t talk to him anymore that day or let him close to her that night. He woke up a few hours into sleep and wanted to put his arm around her and hold her breast and if he could hold both of them in one hand then both and fall back to sleep that way, which she knew was the easiest way he could get back to sleep, but she took his hand off and moved to her end of the bed. They didn’t talk for two days. Sure: “Good-bye,” “So long,” “Excuse me,” “Go ahead,” but nothing much more than that. The woman didn’t write back, the boy didn’t, they never did. Two months later he called information in their city and was told the woman’s phone number was unlisted. He wanted to ask her or the boy, whichever answered, and if a boy did he was prepared for that: “Hi, this Timothy? I’m Gould; I wrote you almost three months ago,” and if it was the older son he’d say “Let me speak to your mother”—but to either of the other two “What gives? You don’t want to write, then as I said in my last letter to you” or “To your mother: that’s fine, you had a change of mind” or “Your son changed his mind, but you should have done the right thing — either of you, or both, for he’s old enough and you must have some control over what he does or doesn’t do and could have squeezed a line or two out of him — and let me know where I stood. You bring me into it, you shift my life somewhat, you turn me around and around and upside down and send me into I don’t know what consternations, in addition to what it does to my family or just my wife, then you shouldn’t step away as if you never wrote” or “Your mother never contacted me to ask if I’d welcome a letter from you and you never asked her to, and which I said I would.” Two years later he was going to be in their city and wrote her, saying “This is like something from ten years ago or twelve or fourteen, I honestly forget, but closer to the latter, I believe, when I wrote saying I was going to be in Madison and would like to look you up. Well, things come back on us, don’t they, and I don’t mean anything sly or snide in that, and I will be in your city in a couple of weeks and hope to see you if you’re there and, if possible, your youngest son. I hope everything’s well with you all. It is with us, and we’ve recently had a second child: Josephine.” No reply from her. He called information there the next week, thinking maybe she’s listed now, but there was no one with her or Timothy’s names at that address or anywhere in the city. A week later, when he was there and after he’d done his business for the day, he went to their old address. He didn’t expect them to be there, though they actually could be, something he just thought of, but didn’t have a phone anymore — service could have been cut off because she hadn’t paid the bill — but he also just wanted to see where they had lived. It was a large Victorian house turned into seven or eight apartments, the tenants’ bells and mailboxes on the porch by the front door. Her name wasn’t on any of them. Maybe she married again and took the last name of her new husband, but then she also would have had hers there, he’d think, and if she was remarried they probably would have moved out: the place seemed rundown. To find out about her he rang the first tenant’s bell and when no one answered, the next bell and then the next and the man who came to the front door said the woman had moved out several months ago and he didn’t know where. One day she was there with grocery bags in her arms and the next day she was loading a rented truck by herself with her furniture and stuff. “As for the boy, he was here a long time — she had two but the eldest has been away at college for a while and you almost never saw him, not even summers, and the youngest left home for Canada more than a half year ago I’d put it and seemed unsure about what for when I asked him. ‘Work,’ he said, and I said ‘Work up there when they have a worse unemployment picture than we do down here?’, ‘Or maybe school then,’ he said, ‘or maybe nothing, just exploring, but not like up a mountain or in a hole,’ is what he said. Young for going off on his own so far alone but he said he saved up for it the last year so it was okay. I never asked his mother what happened to him. Or if I did she never answered or else by accident I had my hearing aid in wrong or turned off. I suppose nothing bad did happen since she never showed any grief or anything and I used to see her almost every day — my window’s right there and I was laid off and then retired so I had little to do but look out and snoop. But she had the same placid look, mood and voice for years. You couldn’t get a laugh out of her, even when you said something really funny but unnaughty, not that she wasn’t the nicest of ladies and also the most helpful in coming to people’s aid here and troubles and things like that in the house.” “And the boy, was he a nice kid — the youngest?” and the man said “Oh yeah, very nice, Tim, a real fine young gentleman. Civi