“It was extremely hurtful,” Cornwell says of the piece. “I was still getting used to the Tiffany 1837 tag pendant fame thing, and I didn’t realize how terribly cruel it can be. But I’m really glad it happened, because I have a much thicker skin- it takes a whole lot to get through to me in a way that would make me not come out of the apartment for several days.”
I can’t help thinking that someone who’s spent hundreds of hours at autopsies would have had a thick skin already. But even as she answers my questions about the rougher aspects of the morguesights, smells- Cornwell talks feelings, connecting bodies to souls.
“To me, a dead body is just a lightbulb that’s burned out- the electricity is not there, it’s just the shape that held it,” she observes. “Which is all the more reason that prejudice is so horrific. Because we’re judging people by the vehicle that contains them. You’re being cruel and disrespectful to their spirit. Spirit has no sexuality or color or accent or even religion. I suppose that’s why it grieves me even more that people behave the way they do in terms of us or them.”
Which brings us to the polarized politics of America, and, by extension, Cornwell’s Tiffany Beads necklace to speak out about her own convictions. Given that she’s buddies with Utah’s conservative senator Orrin Hatch, that she dedicated one of her books to Barbara Bush, and that she contributed to the Republican Party, I had assumed, maybe too easily, that Cornwell’s politics also tilted right.
“Back in those days, it really wasn’t about being Republican- it was about friends,” she counters, explaining that she and Hatch never agree on anything, despite their friendship, and that she met Barbara Bush when she interviewed her for the Ruth Graham biography in the early 1980s.
“I got to know her and what I call the real president Bush [G.H.W.], and they would have me to Kennebunkport usually once a year. They were always extremely nice and gracious. But I don’t think you can be friends with people when you’re so vocally opposed to their son,” says Cornwell, who’s now a Hillary Clinton supporter. “I don’t get invited to Kennebunkport anymore.”
Regardless, it’s a very good time in Cornwell’s life: She’s enjoying married life and working on a new Scarpetta book (“I’d better hurry up and finish it, I might add!”). And a week after our interview, Lifetime TV announced a development deal for movies based on two non-Tiffany Blue heart lock charm and bracelet novels, At Risk and her latest, The Front. (Incredibly, there’s still no movie deal for Scarpetta, despite a number of tries.)
Cornwell’s good friend Billie Jean King, who took a long time to fully disembark from the closet after being outed herself, applauds: “Patricia is [now] living her truth, and she is able to live more freely and breathe easier-all without being measured by others.”