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Peter’s dream had come true. He and Elizabeth now had a child of their own, a sweet, adorable son. Of course, a new inexperienced father was thrilled, although when a little boy’s personality emerged, Peter began to view parenting like walking a tightrope. As a father, he had to try to keep his balance as he inched along hoping he wouldn’t fall. And as time marched on as it always does, Peter’s precocious son often caused him to stutter step and sway on that highwire, with today being one of those days.
Peter was patiently trying to get his 4-year-old offspring interested in watching a Yankee’s game on the tube. The child was smart beyond his years and could quickly soak up knowledge like a sponge, so the rules of baseball were easy for him to understand. But after nine innings, the game was dragging on too long to hold his interest, even when the bases were loaded and it was a full count at the plate that could decide the outcome of the competition.
“Tell me what he was like?” the small boy suddenly chirped at that critical moment.
“Huh?” a distracted dad mumbled absently.
“Tell me about the ‘Neal’ I’m named after,” the youngster insisted.
Two things happened almost simultaneously. The Yankee batter at the plate struck out and the game was over with three fellow players left stranded on the bases and the home team being handed a loss. And Peter’s heart plummeted in his chest after hearing his son’s curious request. The tightrope began to sway ominously beneath his feet.
“Um, it’s like Mommy and I told you. You were named after a man that we both liked very much,” Peter tried for a quick, succinct answer, but that wasn’t sufficient to shut down an inquisitive little boy.
“I already know that, Daddy. But I want to know what he was like. He must have been nice, or you wouldn’t have wanted him as a friend. You only like good people, and you put bad people in jail.”
Peter tried to arrange his thoughts so he could offer a type of truth in a way that would sidestep critical issues. “Neal was a good man, Buddy. He tried to help me put bad people in jail, but one day a really evil one caused him to leave us, and it was a terrible loss. I miss my friend a lot even now, and I don’t ever want to forget him. And that’s why your name is also Neal.”
“If you could have saved him, I’ll bet you would have because you’re the bestest kind of friend,” the boy said in a serious tone.
“Yeah, I would have done that in a heartbeat,” Peter said just as solemnly before trying for a bit of distraction. “Okay, little Buddy, since the Yankees have really embarrassed themselves, I think we should get some ice cream from the freezer and make some gooey sundaes to make that debacle easier to stomach.”
“I vote for Cookies and Cream,” a sidetracked child whooped, enabling Peter to regain his balance on the highwire.
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When young Neal started attending kindergarten at the age of 5, he was already reading and doing simple math problems. He was quite proficient with a MacBook provided by the school that had a school intranet set up with juvenile games which helped youngsters begin coding without ever being aware of the process. So, during a conference with the school’s guidance counselor, a suggestion was made that the boy should enter first grade ahead of schedule. Two parents debated that possibility. They didn’t want to push their son, but neither did they want him to get bored and start not liking school. So, they agreed on a trial basis.
“I really, really like first grade, Daddy,” young Neal told his father after a month of being with children a year older than him. “We get to learn a lot of cool things. Did my Neal like cool things?”
This phrase of “my Neal” had cropped up lately in the child’s vocabulary, and Peter didn’t want to make an issue out of something the boy might outgrow in time. And a father certainly didn’t want to expound on the fact that the “cool” things Neal Caffrey had once liked were usually valuable items that he intended to steal. So, Peter kept it simple.
“Yeah, Buddy, your Neal did like cool things. Now, show me the homework the teacher gave you to do.”
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The following year, little Neal had barely gotten through one half of the school semester when Covid caused New York City to go on lockdown, and resuming his education meant Face Timing with a teacher on a computer. Grudgingly, his parents purchased a laptop for their offspring so his education could continue, but they judiciously installed parental controls so he couldn’t stray into dangerous things on the Web.
Eventually, the city opened up again, and that meant an only child who was starving for other children’s company was allowed to spend time with friends. And those friends also had access to laptops that unfortunately didn’t have that precaution in place.
“Guess what, Dad!” an animated boy proclaimed one day after a sleep-over at a chum’s house. “I looked up the FBI website today on Grayson’s computer, and now I know everything about what you do when you go to work. I tried to find your name and my Neal’s name, but it didn’t have that stuff listed anywhere on the website.”
Peter tried not to cringe, but Elizabeth overheard the conversation, and that meant a different discussion was necessary after a child went to bed.
“Peter, I think you need to be more forthcoming about Neal when you talk to our son. He’s going to ask more questions, and the truth would be better coming from you now because it’s only a matter of time before he ferrets out answers on his own. He’s a very intelligent child who will one day discover that Google is very informative.”
Peter tried to keep his balance on the tightrope that was now once again very unsteady under his feet. “But that means he’ll find out that we’ve named him after a convicted felon who was a master thief and forger, somebody who I put in prison for four years before allowing him to become my partner,” Peter said worriedly.
“But you’ll explain that you managed to change that man into a good person that we came to love, and that was the individual he was named after,” El reminded her husband.
“I guess I have to cowboy up,” Peter said morosely.
“Yeah, you do, Hon. But I have faith in you. Somehow, you’ll find the right words.”
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Peter put off the fragile discussion with his now 7-year-old son as he tried out one explanation after another in his head. None seemed right, so he was kind of stuck idling his mental engine when it was his own child who moved everything forward by putting it into gear. It had started out innocently enough.
“Hey, Dad, do you know what AI is?” Of course, that was a reference to artificial intelligence that can quickly scour the entire planet for answers to any questions one might ask.
“Yes, I do, Buddy. I guess it’s a pretty neat trick to have answers immediately at your fingertips, but I worry that your generation will forget how to think, plan, and actually discover anything by yourselves. People like Leonardo DaVinci and Albert Einstein didn’t have AI, and they became very inventive without any artificial help. They had questions but they worked hard to learn things and get the answers on their own.”
“Yeah, Dad, I get that, but sometimes the answers AI gives you does make you think about a lot of other stuff. I have things that I want to learn on my own, and if I ask you, maybe you can help me get the answers,” young Neal argued.
“So, what kind of things has AI made you think about? And what sort of answers do you need from me?” Peter asked curiously.
“I guess I want to know why you named me after someone who did things a good person wouldn’t do. I read that Neal Caffrey did stuff like stealing things that weren’t his. Wouldn’t that make him a bad person?”
Peter knew the time had come for him to pay the piper, and he was determined to be honest with his son and not sugarcoat anything. “Yes, Neal Caffrey did do some things that were against the law when he was young, but he wasn’t a bad person. He was someone who perhaps grew up without good role models to keep him on the right path. And later as a young man, he might have let himself be influenced by other people who weren’t good role models either. Now I’m not making excuses for him, because everybody makes their own choices about what they do in this life, and there are consequences when you know what you shouldn’t do but you do it anyway.”
“Is that why he went to jail?” young Neal asked quietly.
“Yes, it is, and if you don’t already know, I was the one who chased after him and caught him so he did go to jail as punishment for breaking the law. That was my job, and his job was to take his punishment and learn to be a better person. And that’s exactly what happened, Buddy. Neal learned to be a better person and that’s why I took him on as my partner.”
“So, Dad, did you really trust him even after all the not so nice things he did?”
Once again Peter tried to keep it simple. “I trusted him with my life all the time that we were working together. And there’s nothing more valuable than your life, so we watched out for each other.”
The young boy looked pensive, and an intuitive father could imagine the wheels were still turning in his kid’s brain. So, that meant his responsibility as a father wasn’t done yet and he had to cowboy up and keep going. There was more to be said in this delicate discussion.
“You once asked me a question when you were much younger that I kind of sidestepped, Buddy. You wanted to know what ‘your Neal’ was like. Maybe now is the time to flesh him out a bit so he’s more than just a face in the pictures I’ve shown you, or the person you’ve read about online. Let me try to make him more real for you.”
Suddenly, a child perked up and was all ears. He plopped down on the couch beside his father and had an expectant expression on his face. “Okay, Dad, I’m gonna listen real good.”
Peter smiled. This child was so precious to him, and he hoped he’d do this right as he moved along the swaying tightrope. “You are very much like the person you used to refer to as ‘your Neal.’ The man whose name you carry was incredibly smart just like you, and he possessed a kind and gentle heart just like you. When he loved, he loved completely, and he was always loyal to the important people in his life. I came to regard him as a good friend as well as a partner. I think you would have liked him, too, because he was fun to be around. He was a pretty good magician, and he could paint and draw anything. He painted the picture of your mother that’s hanging over our bed, and he drew that sketch of you and I playing catch that’s on the wall in your room.”
Little Neal looked perplexed. “But how did he know what I was gonna look like if he died before I was born?”
“Well, when you were still growing inside your mother and we were told you were going to be a boy, I guess he just used his imagination back then to think what you might look like one day, and he made that picture before you grew into the size you are now,” Peter quickly filled in the blanks to explain the genesis of a gift that had arrived in Brooklyn on a child’s first birthday. “Anyway, just know that I was proud of him, and you should be proud to share his name.”
“He sounds like he was really nice, and I wish I could have met him in person,” the youngster said wistfully.
“I wish you could have, too,” Peter said gently, knowing it wasn’t an impossible fantasy because Neal wasn’t really dead. But harsh reality meant it could never happen. A protective father would never place his son in a position of keeping a deep, dark secret.
“But maybe one day,” his mind whispered before he quickly shut down that thought. No, that scenario could never unfold, even as much as Peter might want it to become real. Sometimes, you just had to accept what you couldn’t change no matter how much it tore at your heart.