Chapter 48 #2
Charlie and I didn’t know how to deal with her, keeping our distance out of self-preservation.
We asked Dr. Bill about her diagnosis. What exactly was wrong with her?
He collected a thick file and went through her entire psychiatric record.
In truth that was a HIPAA violation, and Mom would have been livid had she known.
But I was grateful he did it. I learned much about her.
When Jim, Mary, and I pulled up to Appalachian Hall after my visit with Charlie, the former psychiatric hospital had been converted into an apartment building called the Kenilworth Inn.
I got out of the pickup truck and walked around the entrance, remembered the rocking chairs, looking up at the third floor where I’d lived for two months at the age of nineteen.
The tennis court where I’d played that infamous match was gone.
But much about the place looked the same from the outside.
As I looked around, I thought about what Einstein said about time.
It’s not real. We have it so everything doesn’t happen at once.
I remembered what the writer William Faulkner said about the past not being gone. It’s not even past.
From there we drove to my former high school, now a middle school.
We parked at the tennis courts, just staring out at them as I envisioned my young self.
I could see her in cheap tennis clothes and shoes with holes in the toes practicing with her male teammates.
When I was living in that moment, it never entered my mind that a half a century later I’d be back feeling like a ghost in my own life.
The timing of that trip was somewhat miraculous, almost biblical. The next week, Hurricane Helene would devastate much of western North Carolina, sending floodwaters roaring through the Montreat gate, washing away much of what I remember from my early days.
In October 2024, Staci and I flew to Nashville where the Scarpetta show was being filmed. I was to have a cameo with Nicole Kidman, and here we go again. Six degrees. Miracles and things meant to be.
The showrunner and screenwriter Elizabeth Sarnoff asked if I would play the judge swearing in Scarpetta as the new chief medical examiner of Virginia. It would be the first time I’d met Nicole Kidman after all these years of hearing about her as a possible Scarpetta.
While the film crew waited inside Nashville’s Supreme Court Building, Nicole walked in wearing jeans, her long hair piled on top of her head. There’s nothing pretentious about her. If anything, she seemed unobtrusive to the point of shy. I found her quiet and professional but gracious and warm.
We needed to stand in front of the Seal of Virginia that had been added as a prop. I would hold a Bible and swear in Nicole. It wasn’t exactly fair. All she had to do was repeat after me. But I had to memorize the oath, and I rarely bother memorizing anything anymore, not even my own phone numbers.
I went over and over my lines in my head, terrified I would flub them and cause one take after another. As Nicole and I got in position for our first rehearsal, I patted her arm.
“Don’t be nervous,” I told her. “I know you’ve not done this before, but you’ll be fine.”
My knees were shaking as I pretended to hold a Bible, and she raised her right hand, noticing she had an inked message scribbled on it. I suppose she needed to jot down something and didn’t have paper handy.
“I guess I’d better wipe that off.” She wet her finger and rubbed away.
“ACTION!”
“I do solemnly swear that I will support the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Virginia…,” I began.
She repeated it after me as we locked eyes.
“And that I will faithfully and impartially discharge all the duties incumbent upon me as…” I stopped cold.
While looking into her blue eyes, I felt Scarpetta looking back, and my mind had gone blank. I said nothing. Then I looked at the sea of faces and all the cameras.
“What is it Scarpetta does for a living?” I asked, and everybody laughed.
We tried again. This time I got through the rest of it.
“… As chief medical examiner, according to the best of my ability,” I said, and she repeated it.
“So help me God,” I went on.
“So help me God,” she echoed.
After it was over, we hugged.
“I really swore you in,” I whispered. “I wasn’t kidding.”
It was a wrap, and I headed back to my trailer to scrub off makeup and return my outfit to wardrobe.
As Staci and I were driving to our hotel, Marty texted me that Charlie had died at 2 p.m. I’d known the end was close.
Notes from her had informed me that he was failing.
He was “seeing spirits,” she said. Once again, the timing seemed prophetic.
I thought of my early days with him when I was desperate to get published, and becoming certain it wouldn’t happen. I felt destined for the same failure I’d had as a tennis player. Never would I have dreamed that one day I’d be filming a cameo with the most successful actress in the world.
After Staci and I returned to Boston, I wrote Nicole Kidman an email, and mentioned Charlie’s passing, telling her it wasn’t a bad sign but quite the opposite. I explained that he was the reason I’d named the character Scarpetta.
“It seems strangely symbolic that he would pass to the other side right after I finally met Scarpetta for the first time…,” I wrote to Nicole. “I feel her spirit waited for you. Just as she picked me (for some reason). I’m so delighted that the two of you have found each other at long last.”
She replied with a sumptuous arrangement of roses and a note:
“Come back soon. Love Nic.”