ignature, 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. Civil, respectful, kept his music low. And listen to this: not the harsh angry clamor: ‘Kill me this, beat me black and blue that, rape the world and its girls, drink and drug and party and buy my harsh angry music,’ but good classical and jazz, to my ears. And no shouting matches with his mother, and when his brother was around, always a nice thing going between them. And things like after he rode his bike he parked it close to the building upright, saying good morning and hello, and helpful to the neighbors too with packages and opening doors, and errands when he was much younger, and you’d have to beg him to take a tip. That says a lot about her too, doesn’t it? I wish my boys had had more of that in them. But I’ve told you so much and I don’t even know why you want to know. They being investigated; the boy?” and he said “Far from it. I’m an old friend of the family’s, Gould Bookbinder’s my name,” and shook the man’s hand. “In town for the day and lost touch with them, so I came to the last address of theirs I had, hoping against the odds, when I couldn’t reach them by phone, to meet up with them here, and seems I didn’t miss them by much. You think anyone else in the building knows where she moved or the boy?” and he said “Nobody. I’ve spoken about it with them, the steadies. It’s become something of a mystery to us we like to wonder about, since they were here awhile, though it’s not like it’s never happened before. Tenants here are always moving in and out at the spur of the moment or their roommates or lodgers are, and after they’re gone I’ve never seen another one again, except by accident someplace, but that only happened once and I forget where.” When he got home he found the letter he sent her two weeks ago returned by the post office: addressee left, no forwarding address. “So that’s it, I guess,” he said to his wife, “and I bet the next time I hear from her, even if I’ve nothing to back this up except that one long lull before I heard from her again, will be in ten to fifteen years. Somehow she’ll find me-well, here’s easy, but if we’re in some other place or two removed from here — and say she’s been thinking of me and my life. And also apologize for what she did to me ten to fifteen years ago and hope I’m well, family’s well, everybody and everything’s well and of course that this letter reaches me and even suggest I write her back but only if I care to—‘There have been so many false starts from me that I can see why you might not want to,’ she could say. And then something about Timothy, ‘if you’re still interested’: married, divorced, remarried, children, he’s become an undersea explorer, a real estate broker, an American folklorist, a professional coin collector, besides flying his own planes, but she won’t give any hint where he lives or what airports he lands in. I’ll almost be retired by then, or five to ten years from it. Have to wait till Josephine finishes college; that is, if we don’t have a third child in the next couple of years, which’ll make it two to three more years till retirement unless I’m somehow sacked — too befuddled to even find the classroom I would’ve been teaching in for thirty straight years; exposed myself when I thought the faculty club’s fireplace was a urinal. Or they give me early retirement with the same tuition remission policy for my kids — I’ve never been able to figure that one out, how they save — but we’ll talk about that some other time. But I know I won’t ever be able to get in touch with her no matter how hard I try. If I called the landlord of the house she recently moved out of, what do you think he’d say? Let me tell you: No forwarding address, possibly not even one to send her rent deposit to, or if there was it’d be a General Delivery or P.O. box number in a big city. So I’ll stop trying and it’s unlikely we’ll ever be in the same place in the next fifteen years where we bump into each other. Even if we were and we did bump, so many years would have gone by since we last saw each other that we wouldn’t know who the other was except if my wallet dropped out of my pocket when we collided and a credit card or my driver’s license or something like that fell out faceup before her eyes or she accidentally kicked it and picked it up to give it back to me and saw my name on it. ‘I don’t believe it,’ she’d say, ‘Gould? Or are you another Gould Bookbinder?’ And for all I know she’d then say ‘Sorry, though, something imperative and I’ve got to run, but I’ll write you, I promise, and you can answer back if you were the right Gould.’ And I wouldn’t hear from her again, since that accident would serve as her every-fifteen-year contact with me, till I was in my eighties and on my death bed, though of course she wouldn’t know who I was, and whatever kind of communication from her, like letters, that people use then would be placed on my chest, but I’d be too blind to read it and too deaf to hear it read.” “So you tried,” she said, “and it’s over with and nothing more to be done about it now. How’d the rest of your trip go?”