Chapter 48
Staci and I instantly connected with her and her actor-musician husband, Christopher Guest. We became good friends, and on several occasions, Jamie interviewed me onstage about my latest book.
I’ve told her that our discussions are the best I’ve had.
She’s bright, intuitive, naturally funny, and relentless.
Most of all, she’s caring, never acting like a diva, always doing something generous and thoughtful. One day while we were on a walk in Beverly Hills, a car jumped the curb and hit a tree. She dashed to the dazed driver, making sure he was all right as he climbed out to inspect the damage.
“Are you hurt? Do you need me to call an ambulance?” she wanted to know.
“I’m okay.”
I could tell he was clueless about the identity of the Good Samaritan in dark glasses and a hat as big as a lampshade.
“Wait a minute,” I said to her as we resumed our walk. “I’m the one who’s supposed to be doing things like that. Not you.”
She regularly calls to check in, giving me the latest production update or simply chatting.
When I was sick with a debilitating bout of diverticulitis in 2023, she sent gardenias, my favorite.
She must have divined that, because I’d never mentioned it.
A year later I’d undergo major surgery, eleven inches of my colon removed, and she lavished me with roses and other gifts meant to comfort.
Breakfast at Jamie’s house means she cooks, not letting anyone else lift a finger.
She doesn’t hide behind her celebrity, calling people herself or making her own reservations.
Fearless behind the wheel of her electric car, she doesn’t hesitate to careen through alleyways and other invented shortcuts.
She has the situational awareness of a spy.
“I’ll never lie to you,” she promised when we began working together, and she never has.
Scarpetta wouldn’t be a TV show were it not for her. When she says she’ll do something, you can count on it. By 2020 she’d started her own production company, and we talked about adapting my space thrillers Quantum and Spin. There wasn’t much interest from her partner, Blumhouse Productions.
“What about Scarpetta?” Jamie asked.
“She’s got nothing going on in Hollywood at the moment,” I replied.
“Let’s do it,” she said, and she would, attracting Nicole Kidman to the project.
Nicole insisted that Jamie play Scarpetta’s sister, Dorothy. Initially, Jamie hadn’t planned on that scenario, but agreed. Finally, this was going to happen. But the process was incredibly slow, year after year slipping by until at long last the filming began in the early fall of 2024.
By then Charlie Cornwell had been battling lung cancer for three years, and I’m grateful that he lived long enough to know the show was happening.
I went to see him for a final time in mid-September as the filming was about to begin.
He and Marty have a beautiful old house outside Asheville, and the location made the visit even more poignant.
Their place is but a few miles from where my mother used to live in Hendersonville.
I was looking at the same Blue Ridge Mountains of my childhood.
When Charlie was well and I’d visit him and Marty, we used to walk in the same park Mom visited near Flat Rock.
I’d been told that Charlie had but a few weeks to live, and as I climbed out of my brother Jim’s pickup truck, I willed myself to be strong.
Now eighty-five, Charlie was incredibly frail when he appeared at the front door, struggling to walk with a cane.
I remember he was wearing baggy pants, a loose denim shirt that Marty had embroidered with an image of their dog.
We sat on the big porch for a few minutes, and he was wrapped up in a sweater. Even so, he was cold.
We relocated to the living room filled with Marty’s paintings.
She was working on a portrait of Charlie that reminded me of what he looked like when I’d first laid eyes on him at Davidson after I’d been there but a few months.
Suddenly, I saw him in his late thirties, putting on his winter coat and Russian cap.
From then on, the rest of my time in college was shaped by him.
“I’ll leave you two to talk,” Marty said, and beneath her calmness was a raging sea of pain.
“Please don’t go.” I sat down across from Charlie. “I want to know more about how the two of you met.”
I’d heard the story before and wanted to hear it again.
I couldn’t imagine what she felt. There had been a constant stream of visitors to the house, all of them wanting their final private moment with Charlie.
Mostly, Marty suffered alone, and I didn’t want to be selfish.
The three of us talked for about an hour, Charlie’s voice hushed and raspy.
Marty recalled their first encounter at a dinner party when Charlie was an associate minister at First Scots Presbyterian Church in Charleston. She was smitten with him rather much like I had been long ago. I told her I was Charlie’s warm-up, our time together a preparation for when she came along.
“I got him ready for you,” I said to her.
Charlie needed me to break him out of his celibate rut at Davidson, and I needed him to help me get started in life.
As we talked, I fooled myself into believing that maybe he’d stave off the inevitable longer.
Maybe he’d beat cancer. I didn’t show my profound sadness as we talked about death and what it meant.
“Well, I am a bit of an expert about that at least,” I said. “And I’ve seen enough not to believe in it.”
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“It was clear to me early on at the morgue,” I explained. “I knew the body on the table wasn’t the person. What we leave behind is like a discarded old shoe. Death isn’t the end because we aren’t these bodies. We just live in them.”
“Well, mine’s about to conk out,” he said.
“Mine’s not getting any younger either,” I added. “But it’s a popular scientific theory these days that consciousness doesn’t originate in the brain. Rather, our brain conducts it rather much like a light bulb.”
“I believe that,” Marty chimed in.
“I hope it’s true.” Charlie’s voice wasn’t much louder than a whisper.
“It is,” I replied. “I swear.”
“When I get to the Other Side,” he said with effort, “is there anybody you want me to look for?”
“Ruth,” I replied instantly. “You two liked each other so much. And I know you won’t be seeking out my mother.”
“No.” He almost laughed, shaking his head.
I brought up our visits at the Grahams’ house when we’d sit in lawn chairs looking out at the mountains.
Ruth loved the sun and so did he. I reminded him of the funny story about the Chaucer book I’d given to her and then taken back, all because of him.
During our last visit I wish I’d known then about the letter still tucked between its pages. Charlie would have been amazed.
“Then I’ll look for Ruth,” he agreed.
It was a surprising thing for him to say.
Prior to this, Charlie claimed he didn’t believe in anything after death.
Including God. But he was rethinking his position.
We talked about the Grahams for a while, remembering those trying times when I was in my early twenties and writing her biography.
I told him again how much help he’d been.
Because of him I had the luxury of working at the medical examiner’s office and as a volunteer police officer.
Not once did he complain and say I should get a real paying job.
Never did he suggest I give up when one book after the next was rejected.
Money was extremely tight, and we went through all his savings.
I thanked him again for everything he’d done.
I told Marty that I’m eternally grateful for the happiness, the fantastic life she’d given him.
She was exactly what he needed, and I knew that the first time I met her.
I was so relieved he’d found happiness that when they married, I paid for their honeymoon, flying them on the Concorde to London.
They took the Orient Express from Paris to Venice and Rome.
“A little better than our honeymoon at Folly Beach.” I reminded him of sand erosion and ants invading our rental.
I brought up the funny story about the three of us being in London at the same time during their honeymoon.
The travel agent put us in the same hotel, 47 Park Street in Mayfair.
A terrible faux pas. I had no idea until the front desk expressed confusion about two Mrs. Cornwells staying there.
From that point on I called Marty my wife-in-law.
By now it was midafternoon, and Charlie was weary. Jim and Mary had gone apple picking to give me privacy and were back waiting in the driveway. Marty went outside to chat with them, and I got up to leave. I hugged Charlie in his chair, feeling his ribs through the back of his sweater.
“I love you, Patsy.”
“I love you too, Charlie. I always did.”
The sun was low over the mountains and bright in trees turning fall colors, the breeze chilly when I left.
On the way back to Charlotte, we detoured in Asheville because I wanted to revisit a few places I’d not seen in decades.
I hadn’t looked at Appalachian Hall since the early 1980s when Charlie and I went there to talk to Dr. Bill Griffin about my mother.
This was at a time when she and I weren’t speaking.
I didn’t realize how devastated she was by my writing Ruth’s biography.
Whenever I was in Montreat doing research, I’d stop by Mom’s house, and she would fly off the handle, accusing me of all sorts of things.
It didn’t occur to me that she felt rejected.
A part of her knew I’d replaced her long ago, and she’d lose it with me the same way she once did with Dad.