Undeterred by the lack of official information, perhaps even encouraged by it, the tabloids felt free to start making the story up themselves. Soon the rumor mill had taken on a life of its own. But by then it was too late for the family or anyone else to stop it.
“We must do something about these press reports.”
Peter Templeton was in his study at home. With its tatty Persian rugs, antique Victorian upright piano, walnut paneling, and bookcases crammed to bursting with first editions, it had been one of Alex’s favorite rooms, a place to retreat to after the stresses of the day. Now Peter paced it furiously like a caged tiger, shaking the newspaper in his hands.
“I mean this is the New York Times, for God’s sake, not some supermarket rag.” The disdain in his voice was palpable as he read aloud: “‘Alexandra Alexandra Blackwell is believed to have been suffering from complications of the immune system for some time.’ Believed by whom? Where do they get this nonsense?”
Dr. Barnabus Hunt, a fat Santa Claus of a man with a crown of white hair around his bald spot and permanently ruddy cheeks, took a contemplative draw on his pipe. A fellow psychiatrist, and Peter Templeton’s lifelong friend, he had been a frequent visitor to the house since Alex’s death.
“Does it matter where they get it? You know my advice, Peter. Don’t read this rubbish. Rise above it.”
“That’s easy for you to say, Barney. But what about Robbie? He’s hearing this kind of poison day and night, poor kid.”
It was the first time in weeks that Peter had expressed concern for his son’s feelings. Barney Hunt thought: That’s a good sign.
“As if his mother were some kind of prostitute,” Peter raged on, “or a homosexual or a…a drug addict! I mean, anyone less likely to have AIDS than Alexandra…”
Under other circumstances, Barney Hunt would have gently challenged his friend’s assumptions. As a medical man, Peter should know better than to give any credence to the pernicious idea that AIDS was some sort of righteous punishment for sinners. That was another thing the press should be blamed for: whipping the entire country into such a frenzy of HIV terror that gay men were being attacked in the streets, refused employment and even housing. As if the dreaded disease could be spread by association. It was a bad year to be gay in New York City-something Barney Hunt knew a lot more about than his friend Peter Templeton would ever have suspected.
But now was not the time to raise these issues. Six weeks after Alex’s death and Peter’s grief was still as raw as an open wound. His office at Kruger-Brent headquarters remained empty. Not that he’d ever done much there anyway. When Peter first married Alexandra, he’d insisted to Kate Blackwell that he would never go into the family business.
“I’ll stick with my psychiatry practice, Mrs. Blackwell, if that’s okay with you. I’m a doctor, not a businessman.”
But in the years that followed, the old woman had ground him down. Kate Blackwell expected the men in her family to contribute to “the firm,” as she called it. And what Kate Blackwell wanted, Kate Blackwell always got in the end.
But now Kate, like Alexandra, was gone. There was no one to stop Peter from spending entire days holed up in his study with the phone unplugged, staring mindlessly out of the window.
The true tragedy of Alexandra’s death, however, was not Peter’s retreat from life. It was the wedge that it had driven between Peter and his son, Robert.
Robbie Templeton was Barney Hunt’s godson. Having known him since birth, Barney had seen firsthand the unusually close bond between Robbie and Alexandra. As a psychiatrist, he knew better than most how devastating it could be for a boy of ten to lose his mother. If not handled correctly, it was the sort of event that could fatally alter someone’s personality. Dead mothers and estranged fathers: two of the key ingredients for psychopathic behavior. This was the stuff that serial killers, rapists and suicide bombers were made of. The danger for Robbie was very real. But Peter point-blank refused to see it. “He’s fine, Barney. Leave it alone.”
Barney’s theory was that because the child had internalized his grief (Robbie hadn’t cried once since Alex’s death, an immensely worrying sign), Peter had convinced himself that his son was okay. Of course, the psychiatrist in him knew better. But Peter Templeton the Psychiatrist seemed to have shut down for the moment, overwhelmed by the pain of Peter Templeton the Man.
Barney Hunt, on the other hand, was still very much a psychiatrist and he could see the truth all too clearly. Robbie was screaming out for his father. Screaming for help, for love, for comfort.
Unfortunately his screams were silent.
While Peter and Robbie drifted past each other like two ruined ghosts, one member of the Templeton household provided a tiny, flickering light of hope. Named Alexandra, after her mother, but referred to from the start as Lexi, the baby that Alex had lost her life delivering was already an utter delight.
No one had told Lexi she was supposed to be in mourning for her mother. As a result, she yelled, gurgled, smiled and shook her little fists with happy abandon, blissfully ignorant of the tragic events surrounding her arrival into the world. Barney Hunt had never been big on babies-a confirmed bachelor, and closet homosexual, psychiatry was his life-but he made an exception for Lexi. She was quite the sunniest creature he had ever encountered. Blond-haired and fine-featured even at six weeks, with her mother’s searching gray eyes, she “smiled whene’er you passed her,” like Robert Browning’s “Last Duchess,” as content to be held by strangers as by her doting nurse.