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Peter’s mind had been haunted by the memory of his dead partner, Neal Caffrey, for so long that it seemed as if the con man had never really left this earth. With the birth of his own son, Peter began to wonder if perhaps that were true.
El’s labor had been long and intense, and even though Peter was not the one performing the grueling work, he was, nonetheless, emotionally and physically exhausted when the newborn came into this world screaming in outraged protest. The wailing, wriggling infant had been forced to vacate his warm and cozy cocoon, and he definitely was not happy about that.
After suffering the indignities of being weighed, measured, bathed, and having a ridiculous knitted hat plunked onto his head, the baby boy finally settled. He “settled,”—he did not sleep! Let’s make that very clear. It was almost as if he was waiting for El to sink into well-earned postpartum dreamland so that he could make his move. As El began snoring softly, the child began fussing until he had gained Peter’s attention, and like the sleep-deprived automaton that he was, Peter responded by picking up the swaddled little bundle.
Of course, the demanding infant immediately quieted because he had gotten his way. Peter could almost detect a certain smugness on his little face. But, as previously stated, Peter was like a zombie at that point—joyful to have a healthy son with all his parts, but mentally not firing on all cylinders either. So, for the sake of argument, he could have been imagining things that were not really there.
Peter collapsed into a rocker and very carefully nestled the small, fragile human being into his arms. The new father looked down to acquaint himself with his equally new offspring, and the baby’s blue eyes stared back at him without blinking. Peter wondered if neonates had the mental capacity to form thoughts right after birth, or did they just react to all the new stimulation in their environment? Nevertheless, this tiny creature managed to look pensive and judgmental, and that threw Peter for a loop. The silent perusal seemed to go on and on.
During the pregnancy, Peter and El had waffled on a name for the child that a sonogram informed them was a boy. They had bantered around name after name, but could not seem to find the “right” one. They pragmatically decided that they would wait to meet him, and then all would suddenly become clear. As father and son continued their silent scrutiny of one another that first day of the child’s existence, the anxieties and insecurities that Peter had been feeling regarding his role as a new parent began melting away. Sitting there with this child in his arms felt so familiar and comfortable, as if they were joined in some ethereal way and had known each other for a lifetime instead of an hour. Now Peter knew the perfect name for this baby, and he said it out loud, almost with a question mark at the end of his utterance.
“Neal …?”
Peter’s exhausted neural synapses must have gotten a second wind because a thought, or maybe it was a memory, flashed through his consciousness. I know this smile, his senses told him. And then he heard, or thought he heard, the soft words that seemed to waft across the silence.
“I’m here, Peter, and now I’ll be with you for a long, long time.”
~~~~~~~~~~
Neal was what veteran mothers deemed “an easy baby.” Basically, for the first month, all that he did was eat and sleep, although he stubbornly disdained any semblance of a schedule. Some nights, Peter and El would hear babbling and cooing coming from the baby monitor late into the night. However, he rarely cried, and seemed content to simply observe the world around him with a sense of wonder and contemplation.
Serendipitously, the Burkes’ little boy had apparently managed to evade that dreaded infant malady of colic that had other mothers plummeting into tearful depression and wishing that they could run away to an island retreat. Neal’s disposition was always sunny, and his smiles could melt the hardest of hearts. El would prop him up in his little infant chair so that he could survey his kingdom—after all, he was their little prince. He would giggle at Satchmo’s antics and gurgle at sunbeams. However, when Peter came home from the White Collar office, the baby’s eyes always followed his every move, and it soon became evident that he was a Daddy’s boy, through and through.
Of course, Elizabeth and Peter had read all of the books on a child’s growth and development, and could recite a chronological list of the milestones that they could only hope that their offspring would attain at the proper time. Neal’s pediatrician, who was quite used to dealing with older, well-informed, but nervous first-time parents, was patient with their apprehensive, never-ending questions. He assured them that their son was certainly on track with his motor and social skills—in fact, he was way ahead of the curve.
At the tender age of four months, he was already rolling over and curious about colorful toys placed before him. He would pick up a block or a plastic ring of keys and transfer the object from one hand to the other, turning them this way and that, as if contemplating how he could use them for some purpose that only he knew. He loved picture books where he could find things, and made it clear that he wanted his Daddy to read to him.
He also always wanted to be on the move, and loved stroller rides accompanied by his parents and Satchmo. He really had grown into a quite handsome little boy, and women stopped them on the street to marvel at his good looks. He was a long and lean little baby, and had none of the infantile pudginess in a face dominated by big, blue eyes. Observers always commented on this captivating feature, and assumed that Peter’s brown eyes had taken a backseat to El’s when the gene pool had aligned.
“He’s going to be a heartbreaker and a lady-killer with those beautiful looks,” they predicted. “When he grows up, he’s going to have to beat the women off with a stick!”
The future “heartbreaking lady-killer” was crawling at seven months, and prowling the main floor of the Burke townhouse. El would find him burrowing inside closets and hiding behind furniture. Eventually, she and Peter discovered a stash of kitchen spoons and one of El’s necklaces behind the living room curtains.
Even though the house was baby-proofed, obviously it wasn’t Neal-proofed. His tiny, nimble fingers could open baby gate latches in a flash. The little boy was thoroughly insulted when Peter set up a playpen in the living room. Neal just gave his father the evil eye and proceeded to climb out of the enclosure. Scaling the sides of his crib was also a piece of cake.
“Now, you just stop this right now!” Peter read the riot act to the rebellious child. “If you insist on trying to break your little neck, there are nets out there that I can buy to attach to the top of your crib. Do you want to feel like you’re in a jail cell? And, there are also baby tethers that I can use to restrict your unsupervised cruising into places where you should not go. There is a definite radius that you must stay within or else there will be consequences. So, I certainly hope that you don’t force my hand, Neal.”
Neal scowled, and then blew a raspberry in his father’s direction. Peter glowered right back. He had been down this road before trying to ride herd on another slippery Neal. Then, as if a switch had been flipped, the tiny dynamo smiled and held out his arms to his father as he uttered his first word— a very clearly enunciated “Pe-ter!”
“That’s ‘Daddy’ to you, Buddy,” a flummoxed father sputtered. “You’re a regular little manipulative conniver, aren’t you? Just stop trying to distract me!”
Neal laughed delightedly, apparently pleased at knocking his father off his stride.
That initial first word heralded an ever-expanding vocabulary, and as the months went by, it seemed that Neal never shut up. If he thought that his droning chatter was being ignored, he would then do something outrageous to get a parent’s attention again. Sometimes that was running headlong out the front door, or perhaps scaling the steps to sail tiny boats in the upstairs toilet.
Yep—Neal was certainly a handful, but he was loved and cherished by his doting parents as well as quirky little Mozzie, who spent a lot of afternoons keeping El company, as well as keeping her sane. Neal and Mozzie had bonded immediately while the child was still an infant, and now the toddler trailed after him like a puppy, hanging onto the patient man’s every word. When Elizabeth decided to spend more time at her catering business, Mozzie became Neal’s “manny,” and all seemed copacetic. Well, almost everything seemed normal, but that was a relative term in Neal and Mozzie’s world.
When Neal was barely three years old, Peter came home early one afternoon and found poor, long-suffering Satchmo with handcuffs encircling his front paws. Neal was seated in front of him, his brow creased in concentration, as he tried to pick them with a turkey skewer from the kitchen drawer.
“Sometimes, in desperate circumstances, you have to employ creative out-of-the-box thinking and use whatever you can find,” Mozzie was advising his protégé.
At age three and a half, Neal could easily execute a variation of the shell game con. He would put a small action figure under one of three paper cups, and then smoothly move them around the table. When he had stopped shuffling their locations, he would ask his “mark” to find Iron Man, or Thor, or some other plastic figurine under the right cup.
Mozzie quirked an eyebrow at Peter. “He’s really good with slight of hand, Suit. Sometimes he even dupes me, and then I have to take him out for ice cream.”
Peter and El began re-evaluating Mozzie’s influence on their child, and decided, at age four, to send the little boy to pre-school so that he could be with other children his own age. Neal was a very social creature, and everyone liked him. His favorite activity was drawing, and his teacher marveled at his creations, excitedly telling his parents that the little artist exhibited a natural talent. Neal’s landscapes had depth and a sense of realism, and his people were far from stick figures. They were fleshed out with precise facial expressions and an implied liquid fluidity of movement. One specific colored pencil drawing, however, did not make it up on the kitchen refrigerator right away. In fact, it became the impetus behind a series of discussions and much soul-searching for Peter.
That evening, when Peter walked in the door after a long day at the office, he could sense the tension in his wife as soon as he bent down to plant a kiss on her cheek.
Sighing, he asked resignedly, “Okay, so what’s Neal done now?”
El looked at him with wide, almost-frightened eyes. “He brought a drawing home from school today, Peter. And when I saw it, it kind of freaked me out.”
When Peter gazed at the questionable artwork, he understood El’s sense of shock and awe. Neal had obviously drawn a picture of Peter behind his desk at the White Collar office. The kid had visited there on a few occasions when El stopped by to show him off to Hughes and Peter’s team, so he had all the details accurately represented. The mind-boggling thing about this picture wasn’t Neal’s sense of accurate recall. It was the second figure in the picture—that of a tall, slim man in a dark suit with a fedora perched jauntily on his head. The two men in the picture seemed engaged in conversation, and the unknown second person had a cocky smile on his face.
Peter found Neal finishing his bowl of little pasta rounds at the kitchen counter.
“Hey, Buddy!” Peter said initially while he ruffled his son’s mop of silky hair.
He then held up Neal’s drawing and remarked, “This is a really good picture. Do you want to tell me about it?”
“It’s you at work, Daddy,” Neal beamed.
“I can see that, Pal, but who is this other person in my office?”
Neal smiled even wider. “That’s me—not now, of course, but when I grow up and can help you to solve cases.”
Peter felt a sudden chill and an eerie flutter in the pit of his stomach.
“So, Neal ….. you and I are going to work together one day? Does that mean that you want to be an FBI agent when you grow up?”
Neal looked sadly pensive, an expression that no four-year-old child’s face should display.
“I think that I really want to be an astronaut,” he said quietly, “so I can soar way up into heaven. But I know that you wouldn’t want me to leave you, Daddy, so I’ll stay right here on Earth because you still need me.”
~~~~~~~~~~
Mozzie came to visit that weekend bringing a fresh supply of Play-Doh and an illustrated art book for Neal. He found father and son outside on the back patio.
“Okay, mon frère,” Mozzie instructed as he opened the bookmarked page to a picture of the Venus de Milo, “fashion a replica of this masterpiece, if you can. I’m taking it easy on you because now you don’t have to concern yourself with attaching those pesky arms.”
While Neal delightedly toiled away on the glass-topped table, Mozzie and Peter retired to the wrought iron chairs a short distance away out of earshot of the miniature sculptor. Peter needed to have a delicate conversation with Neal’s best friend, but it was hard to know how to start.
“Mozzie, have you ever ….. I mean, do you sometimes get a weird feeling about Neal? Not really weird, but ….. aw, damn, I don’t even know how to ask this, or what words to say that don’t make me sound as if I’ve lost my mind,” Peter finally managed to blurt out.
However, Mozzie made it a bit easier. “Yes, Suit, I do. I didn’t need an Ouija board to pick up that vibe almost from the first minute that I saw him.”
“Are we talking about the same thing, Moz?” Peter wanted to clarify, even though he could not say it out loud.
“I do believe we are, Peter,” the little bald man whispered in a rare moment of familiarity with the FBI agent.
“But why—or maybe I should ask how?” Peter hoped someone could make sense of this phenomenon, even if it had to be a conspiracy-driven fanatic.
Mozzie was thoughtful and chose his words carefully.
“As to the why, Peter, perhaps the answer lies within yourself. You just couldn’t bear to let him go,” Mozzie replied as he saw little Neal lift his head momentarily from his project and cock his head questioningly in their direction.
“So, are you saying that you embrace the concept of reincarnation?” Peter wanted to know.
“Well,” Mozzie began, “maybe not per se, but I’m definitely leaving all avenues of explanation open at this point. Let’s just call me an agnostic, for lack of a better description.”
Then the suddenly serious man challenged Peter with a quote. “I’ll bet that you can’t guess who said this:
Everything science has taught me strengthens my belief in the continuity of our spiritual existence after death. I believe in an immortal soul. Science has proved that nothing disintegrates into nothingness. Life and soul, therefore, cannot disintegrate into nothingness, and so are immortal.”
“Okay, Moz, I give up,” Peter sighed. “Who said that?”
“It was Werner von Braun,” Mozzie explained. “He was a German aerospace engineer who developed the V2 rocket for Germany in WWII, and later the Saturn V rocket for the United States. According to a NASA source, he was, ‘without doubt, the greatest rocket scientist in history.’”
Mozzie let that simmer for a minute before he continued. “A rocket scientist, Peter! Not a practicing Buddhist or an esoteric Hindu yogi. You can’t get anymore logical and pragmatic than a dyed in the wool empirical scientist!”
Neal’s best friend had thrown down the gauntlet, but Peter didn’t pursue that avenue of discussion any further because he just did not know how to respond. Instead, the two men sat quietly for a long time listening to the sounds of buzzing bees and an occasional bird chirping in the nearby oak tree. Finally, it was Mozzie who again broke the silence.
“When Neal first died, I accepted that fact. But, even though I knew that he was really gone, every now and again I would think of him as if he was just away for a while, and would be coming back any day. I’d say to myself, ‘I have to tell Neal about this,’ or ‘I can’t wait for Neal to see that.’ It was like he was off on a job or a vacation and was due back momentarily. Well, it has been four years now since he’s been gone—the exact length of his prison sentence. So, while my rational mind tells me that he is buried in the cemetery, I cannot convince my wistful subconscious to turn off the hopeful longing for just one more glimpse, one more conversation—maybe one more chess game.”
Peter finally offered his own confession. “I used to see him, Mozzie, as plain as you sitting beside me now. We would have discussions, and he would help me with cases and accompany me on operations. He was always right beside me, until one day I finally noticed that he seemed to have faded away right before little Neal was born. It makes me wonder, you know, because my child seems so like his namesake.”
After a pause, Peter whispered another revelation. “You are the first person that I have ever shared this with, Mozzie. I’ve never even told El. It is the one and only secret that I have chosen to keep from my wife.”
Mozzie looked up at him wistfully. “You’re secret is safe with me, Suit. And, may I add, you are one lucky man because you get to have another bite of the apple.”
Peter looked thoughtful. “This time around, Mozzie, I want him to have a better life—a more stable and loving foundation—so that maybe things will turn out differently for him. Neal deserved better than what fate handed him. He was like a tragic Greek hero, never finding true love, never really being happy because life kept knocking him down time after time.”
Mozzie was thoughtful as well. “It pains me to say this, Suit, but, for the most part, Neal was happy working with you. He helped you out because he wanted your approval, and desperately wanted you to be proud of him. I hope you realize that he chose to stay. That ridiculous anklet restraint was a joke. It was more like a wedding band because it kept the two of you bound together by choice rather than by any threat.”
Peter looked Mozzie in the eye. “In this lifetime, I’ve got to get it right, Mozzie. I can’t let him down!”
Mozzie looked like a wise old guru as he advised the conflicted and worried man beside him.
“Let Neal be Neal, Peter. Let him evolve into whomever he is meant to be. Right now, neither one of us knows who that is, and it will probably be a wild ride until we find out. Just have some faith in whichever Neal is sitting over there molding clay and probably listening to every word.”
~~~~~~~~~~
Since the aforementioned pact had not be sealed in blood or with a good-faith handshake, each protagonist in this drama utilized surreptitious influence to mold the child into the Neal that they wanted back in their lives. And, as Mozzie had foretold, it sometimes was a ‘wild ride,’ much to Peter’s chagrin.
Neal seemed quite bored when Peter took him to baseball games beginning when he was eight years old. He preferred his sports to be a bit more extreme. One afternoon, Peter found him three stories up in the backyard oak tree. He had looped the garden hose over a thick branch, and was practicing rappelling down to the ground.
Peter took him to the natural history museum to see the dinosaur exhibit when he was nine. Neal preferred spelunking in the deep old abandoned subway caves with Mozzie.
At ten years old, Peter found out that Neal had been expertly forging his signature on excused absences from school. It was only when Neal’s teacher inquired about her student’s health problems that Peter found out about all the bogus doctor appointments. Apparently, the slick little forger took solitary off-book field trips to the MoMA to prowl the many galleries of art that were on display. When the truant had to endure one of Peter’s tirades, he just smiled charmingly and told Peter that Dutch painter Vincent Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” was his absolute favorite, and he could not see it too many times.
Peter sat beside Neal in the park one Sunday when he was twelve. The beleaguered father wasn’t sure if this was the right time for this discussion, but Neal always seemed to be older than his years. A worried and unsure father did not want to look back one day and berate himself for missing a step and finding himself behind the eight ball.
“Listen, Buddy, I was wondering if you might have any questions about being with girls ……. or maybe even guys,” Peter hastily added. After all, he was a progressive and tolerant father, so he needed to cover all of his bases during “The Talk.”
Neal reveled in Peter’s discomfort and laughed delightedly.
“Don’t sweat it, Dad. I’m good. I’ve got all the facts right up here,” Neal assured his embarrassed father as he tapped the side of his head.
When Neal reached high school, the girls no longer conformed to that old-fashioned premise of waiting for the boys to pursue them. They became quite focused and hounded Neal with a determined zeal. Those fawning ladies of days gone by had been right when they predicted that Neal’s good looks would require him to drive females away with a stick. El, in a fit of pique, told Peter that she was contemplating sweeping them off the Burke porch with a broom! Occasionally, one particular girl might capture Neal’s attention for a while, but he never seemed to give his heart away. That just made him seem even more mysterious and alluring to his fan club.
Neal was actually a very proficient and gifted student, and was awarded a full scholarship to Amherst College in Massachusetts upon graduation from high school. Amherst was a prestigious institution of higher learning that focused on the liberal arts. Neal decided to double major in “Art and Art History” as well as “Law, Jurisprudence and Social Thought.” He tactfully explained his choices to Peter before his proud parents trundled him off to New England.
“My first love, as you well know, will always be art, Dad. But maybe my other major can give me some insights into ‘the system’ if I ever decide to steal a masterpiece for myself and get caught.”
“I think you meant to say loopholes, not insights, Neal,” Peter said drolly with a sigh, and wondered just how much influence Mozzie still maintained in the young man’s life.
Neal graduated summa cum laude from Amherst, and then was the recipient of a coveted Rhodes scholarship enabling him to pursue an advanced degree in art history at Oxford University in Great Britain. His parents were so very proud, but the void of his absence over these last years was hard to endure. Both Peter and El suspected that their son might eventually decide to settle abroad in a European city renowned for its venerable art. Instead, Neal surprised them by returning home after earning his doctorate, and taking a professorship at Columbia University in New York City.
Neal seemed content to be living in a SoHo loft and producing his own paintings that hung in some pricy, upscale galleries. He was a frequent visitor to his childhood home, and his parents were always thrilled to see him. Occasionally, he would meet up with Mozzie for dinner or a game of chess, but eventually the little man left for Detroit after his beloved Mr. Jeffries developed health problems that prevented him from running his orphanage. Mozzie was determined to carry on the benevolent man’s sponsorship of the place where Mozzie grew up.
“Are you happy with your life, Neal,” Peter asked one day when they both met for lunch in Manhattan.
“Of course I am, Dad. I’m doing what I enjoy, and I am where I’m supposed to be. It’s the best of both worlds,” Neal answered softly.
Eventually, at age sixty-eight, Peter finally retired from the FBI. Now he and El would have the well-earned freedom to enjoy their golden years traveling and pursuing new interests and hobbies. Unfortunately, the future that they planned was not destined to be one of glorious shared sunsets on foreign shores. By the time that the doctors finally had a definitive diagnosis, the ovarian cancer within Elizabeth’s body had spread, and now any treatment would only be palliative.
In her final days under hospice care, she pulled an ever-present Neal close and whispered, “Take care of Peter, Neal. He’ll need you more than ever now.”
Neal noted that his mother had asked him to take care of “Peter,” not take care of “your father.” Neal suddenly began to realize that El had always known, but had never put it into actual words. She just graciously accepted what she knew to be true, and loved unconditionally. Peter was smart, but El was perceptive and very wise as well, and a grateful son loved her with all of his heart for being the mother that he had always wanted.
“I promise—I’ll always take care of him,” he whispered through his tears as he watched her finally relax back upon the pillow. She would pass away later that day.
Peter was like a lost soul without his beloved El by his side. He spent months in a deep depression, and Neal finally took an open-ended sabbatical from Columbia to stay with him. Little by little, Neal got his father to start doing things again, but Peter’s heart wasn’t in it. The household chores eventually fell by the wayside most days, and any home repairs were accomplished haphazardly, or not at all. He flatly refused to cook for himself, preferring frozen entrees or deviled ham sandwiches. It was clear that he had become a disgruntled, sullen man, and, if the truth were known, Peter cursed each morning that he awoke to a new day.
As the years passed, Neal made sure that his father got the bifocals that he desperately needed, as well as the hearing aids that the contrary man turned off when he wanted to tune the world out. Neal ferried Peter back and forth to doctor appointments, and listened patiently to his litany of complaints concerning his aches and pains. He let Peter pontificate about the sad state of the economy in the country, and the shortcomings of all the politicians. The angry, resentful man would rant on and on for hours, until he would lose his sense of concentration when he went off on a tangent. Neal finally gave up his loft and moved in permanently to his childhood home when Peter forgot to turn off a gas burner on the stove and a dishtowel caught fire.
Much to Neal’s regret, he noted that Peter began to live more and more in the past, and could not remember more recent occurrences like whether he had bathed or eaten a meal. However, it seemed to give the old FBI agent great pleasure to relate every still-vivid sting and operation that he had run in his heyday at White Collar with Neal by his side. When they talked, the confused man could not understand why Neal called him “Dad,” and that caused him to become agitated. Therefore, Neal now addressed his father as “Peter,” and that seemed to work because Neal had stopped being his son, and had become his CI once more.
After a long, dreary winter of snow and slush, a beautiful spring afternoon heralded the beginning of baseball season, and Neal had two tickets for the opening game. Peter usually loved sitting in a box seat at the stadium, but today was a bad day, and he became obstinate and refused to leave the house because he couldn’t find his beloved Yankee cap. Thankfully, Neal found it under a collection of winter boots and scarves in the hall closet, and put it on Peter’s head.
“It’s all good, Peter. Now we’re all set, and we can go,” Neal said with a relieved sigh.
Suddenly, Peter turned, and for the first time in months, Neal detected a moment of fleeting clarity in Peter’s eyes as he softly murmured, “I didn’t want to let you go, Neal, so you stayed for me. I know that you did—so, ‘thank you.’”
Neal smiled at the man before him who had been so many things over the span of a very long lifetime—a partner, a friend, a father, a mentor—and, ultimately, a responsibility. Things had come full-circle.
“I once told you, Peter, that I will stay for as long as you need me. And that is one promise that I’ll always keep.”