That’s Finny sitting there, Finny at age fifty or so, with gray streaks in his blond hair, with deep smile lines from decades of flashing his crooked grin. And there it is, that familiar smile that I know better than my own, greeting me.
He stands, and I know his height before I see it. I know the length of his legs. I recognize the head tilt as he says, “Autumn, hello.”
“Hi.” I’m trying not to stare at the ghost before me, but the hostess has pulled out the chair, and everyone is waiting for me to sit. To compensate, I sit too quickly as she tries to push in the chair for me, and I end up four inches too far from the table. I adjust myself as she assures John that a waitress will be by shortly.
“It’s good to see you again,” he says when we’re alone.
“Again?”
“Yes,” he says, his uncanny features still mesmerizing me. “When you and Phineas were seven or, no, nine? It was after my father died. I had a short visit with Phineas, and when Angelina came to pick him up, you were with her.”
“I don’t remember that,” I say. I will myself to look away.
Sometime later, I’ll have to figure out what to do with this knowledge, the knowledge of how Finny would have looked as he aged, the way that the boyish charm of his face would have stayed even as markers of maturity occurred. I allow myself to feel just enough of the hurt to keep myself sharp.
“It’s strange that I don’t remember it,” I say, raising my chin, “considering how rare it was for Finny to see you at all.”
John Smith nods and takes a breath. He adjusts his posture as he takes my verbal blow, and I try not to be haunted by the width of his shoulders as he shrugs.
“And that’s why we’re here. So thank you for this.”
I’m about to thank him in return, reflexively, when I catch myself and simply say, “You’re welcome.”
“Yes, well,” he says, and the befuddled, eager-to-please look on his face, which is almost Finny’s face, is almost breaking me. “I’m incapable of expressing how much I regret not knowing and appreciating Phineas when I had the chance.”
The waitress is suddenly there, and I’m agreeing to lemon in my water and being handed a menu that looks like a wedding invitation. John already has what looks like a dirty martini, but it appears untouched. Condensation is beginning to form under the chill of what’s probably incredibly expensive vodka.
“So what is it, John?” I say after we’ve ordered strange-sounding appetizer salads and the waitress has faded into the shadows. “Why did you stay away for most of his life?”
“I was trying not to be a terrible father.” He laughs bitterly. “I understand that I failed at that, spectacularly, but at the time, I thought if I wasn’t there, then I couldn’t mess him up.” John lifts the martini to his lips and takes a sip, then stares into the liquid. “The few times I got the courage to ask to see him, Phineas always seemed so happy. Not happy to see me, just happy, thriving. He’d tell me about you and playing soccer and the things he was learning in school that excited him, and I’d tell myself, ‘See, he’s doesn’t need you.’”
“You had to have known, on some level—”
“Yes, of course,” he says. He sets the martini glass down and looks me in the eye, urging me to believe his sincerity. “I was a coward. Being a real father to Phineas would have meant going back and facing all the ways my own father had failed me. Have you ever had something like that in your past, where when you look back, your feelings are so obvious and your own thoughts were clearly lies to yourself?”
“Yes,” I say, because I owe him honesty in return, even if he hasn’t earned my trust yet.
John nods gratefully. “It all fell apart after my daughter was born,” he explains. “Somehow, my ex-wife convinced me to have a child with her, and the moment I saw Stella in the NICU, I wished I could go back in time and see Phineas when he’d first come into the world.”
“Why do you call him Phineas instead of Finn or Finny?” I ask. There’re so many other questions that his story has inspired, but this one keeps nagging me.
John blushes.
He blushes the way his son would, not turning red but pink in the cheeks in a way that highlights the delicate bones of his face, offsets the gold of his hair.
“As I’ve talked to people, I have come to learn that no one called him that,” he says. “But Phineas was my grandfather’s name.”