This matter of our paternity, Jake. Does it interest you at all?

I expect if I asked you if anything in the universe interested you at all, I would receive the same shrug. But I assume you’re willing to take down my speculations, they being in the nature of an elaboration on my story.

– Yes.

Good man. First, I think we must start from the position that we do not share a father. Your complete lack of any memory of a paternal figure during the period before my birth, while not conclusive, given the unreliability of a witness aged zero to three, is suggestive. But that we look so unlike each other, and Mother so unlike each of us, is telling. I’d lay odds your father was a Portuguese fisherman, a Cabral or Texeira from New Bedford, astray in Brockton somehow. I’ve been told I could be part Shatha. Harder to explain that, but never mind.

Mother gently but adamantly refuses to provide any clues about the identity of either man. As I see it, there are three possible reasons for this.

1. She’s forgotten both of them. To accept this we must believe she entertained two different fellows three years apart while she was in such a drunken, drug-addled, or otherwise distracted state that she has not the slightest recollection of either one. I call this possible but unlikely.

2. She remembers one, but not the other and so could enlighten one of us, at least, but wishes to spare the feelings of the other. I think we may dismiss this as improbably sentimental.

3. She remembers one or both, but chooses to reveal nothing to either of us. I consider this the most likely solution, and have spun a little theory to go along with it. I won’t ask you if you want to hear it.