Its one of us, p.35
It’s One of Us, page 35
The gates are tall, the adobe walls thick, and the path to the beach is studded with cameras.
The past rarely stays hidden. Olivia knows this. But for now, she is safe. They are both safe.
* * *
THE MAN WITH MANY FACES
Documentary Script (Draft)
SCENE
VIDEO
AUDIO
1
The Setup: Park
B-Roll: Scenes from a lab, test tubes and centrifuges spinning, scientists in lab coats.
Text: “Winterborn Life Sciences, Chapel Hill, North Carolina”
Text: “Helping Create Families Everywhere”
FADE TO:
B-Roll: PARK BENDER’S office
Text: “Park Bender’s Home Office”
Observational: PARK looks up, stares at the window, seemingly lost in thought.
B-Roll: (SLOW PAN) Framed photographs of multiple children of various ages on a table.
B-Roll: Close-up of the computer keyboard as fingers fly across the keys.
B-Roll: Professional graduation photo of a young Park Bender, smiling for the camera.
Exterior: The brown wooden door to Park’s office, and a woman’s raised fist.
Music: Thomas Dolby, “She Blinded Me with Science.”
Narrator: When he donated his sperm, he thought he was helping families in need. He couldn’t imagine the trouble that was to come.
Music: Dolby melds into Chopin’s Nocturnes, Op. 9: No. 2 in E-flat Major.
Narrator: A celebrated sperm donor, Park Bender has thirty-two children, and counting. Today, he’s meeting one of his daughters for the first time.
Park: “It started as a way to earn a little extra cash. I was in grad school, broke, like everyone around me. I had some friends who were doing it and they said I could make some cash and help people. All I ever wanted was to help people. I had no idea what this would turn into.”
Background: Three sharp knocks at the door.
Park: (Laughing nervously.) “I guess she’s here.”
SCENE
VIDEO
AUDIO
3
The Setup: The Murders
B-Roll: A calm lake on a sunny spring day.
Text: “Radnor Lake, Nashville, Tennessee”
B-Roll: A set of feet hurries along the path into the woods, dragging a body wrapped in canvas.
B-Roll: A car rolls away from the lake parking lot.
B-Roll: The Nashville city skyline, sweep pan the river, the bridges, the lights of the city.
Text: “Nashville, Tennessee”
B-Roll: Lower Broadway, the streets filled with revelers
B-Roll: PARK BENDER’S office
Park Interview: PARK BENDER, 43 years old, sits at his messy desk typing on a computer. He wears a white button-down and faded jeans. His hair has a streak of silver from temple to nape. The sun shines into the room, illuminating dust motes floating in the air.
Sound: Birds chirp, a breeze rustles the trees. Water laps the shoreline.
Narrator: They found the first body in the lake.
Sound: Heavy breathing, as someone runs.
Narrator: At the time, they had no idea how many there were.
Sound: Tires crunching on gravel.
Music: Dread-filled violins.
Narrator: No idea how many women he had killed.
Music: Strains of twangy country from the downtown honky-tonks.
Narrator: Nashville was under siege, and they didn’t even know it.
Park: “I had no idea what was happening. One day we were fine. The next, I was a murder suspect.”
SCENE
VIDEO
AUDIO
26
The Setup: Scarlett
B-Roll: A rocky path toward a mountain lake focuses on a weathered sign that says “Maverick Pass Campground.”
Text: “The Halves Family Reunion”
FADE TO:
Observational: A young woman in a plaid skirt with red hair stands with her back to the camera, watching over a group of people.
Scarlett Interview: SCARLETT FLYNN, 18, sits at a picnic table, wearing sunglasses, her hair in a bun.
Text: “Maverick Pass Campground”
Observational: SCARLETT watching a crowd of people with a smile on her face.
B-Roll: (SLOW PAN) Men and women of various ages milling around a campground.
B-Roll: The lake, shimmering, people in inner tubes and a boat pulling a skier.
B-Roll: A picnic lunch on a long table covered in a blue-checked tablecloth.
B-Roll: (PAN IN; CLOSE-UP) A fly sits on the potato salad.
FADE TO:
B-Roll: A campfire.
Sound: Shouts, happy laughter, children’s screams of joy.
Narrator: Scarlett Flynn was determined to get all of the siblings together at least once.
Scarlett (VO): You don’t know what it’s like, everyone staring, everyone gossiping. I didn’t know anything, but they treated me like I was the one who’d done it. Which wasn’t the coolest, you know? Peyton was responsible, and I bore the brunt of it.
Music: Nirvana, “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” from a car stereo.
Narrator: The Halves, as they call themselves, are trying to find a way forward in the midst of the tragedy that brought them together.
Scarlett: Having so many siblings is like a blizzard erupting out of nowhere. I felt overwhelmed at first. Everyone’s different, but everyone’s the same. I’ve met all the ones we know about so far, but we get new people still. We don’t know how many are out there. Incredible, isn’t it?
Sound: Crickets, the soft strumming of a guitar.
Music: Melancholic guitars.
SCENE
VIDEO
AUDIO
38
The Setup: The Detectives
B-Roll: Nashville Police Headquarters.
Text: “Metro Police, Nashville, Tennessee”
B-Roll: Inside the police headquarters.
B-Roll: A long, gray-carpeted industrial hallway.
B-Roll: (Close-up on sign) “Violent Crimes”
B-Roll: The rabbit warren of back-to-front desks of the violent crimes team.
Text: “The Homicide Team”
Will Osley Interview: DETECTIVE WILL OSLEY, 38 years old, sits in a chair with his cowboy-booted feet on his desk. His gold sunglasses are clipped in his pocket.
Text: “Homicide Detective William Osley”
Observational: OSLEY flips the pages of a file.
B-Roll: A binder full of paper.
Sound: Typing, phones ringing.
Narrator: The police were baffled by the earlier case involving Park Bender.
Sound: Whispery pages turn.
Osley (VO): So when we exhumed the body, we typed the embryo. Sure enough, the baby was the roommate’s. Created quite a bit of confusion for us because I gotta admit, I really thought Bender was our guy. Just goes to show you sometimes, your instincts can be off. Sure am glad we didn’t force the issue, because if we’d peeled Bender’s life open the way we were going...well, I’m just glad the right man was convicted. Still circumstantial as hell, but that’s a pretty strong tie—DNA in the body is hard to refute. Guess she told her mama the truth about who got her pregnant.
FADE TO:
B-Roll: Park Bender’s home in Nashville.
Text: “Park Bender’s Home”
B-Roll: A police car.
Observational: A female detective with blond hair watches the house.
FADE TO:
B-Roll: The rabbit warren of back-to-front desks of the violent crimes team. Moore has joined Osley.
Text: “Homicide Detective Josephine Moore”
Moore Interview: DETECTIVE JOSEPHINE MOORE, 29 years old, dressed in a black pantsuit, stands with her arms crossed, shaking her head.
Sound: Suburban bliss—birds chirping, the whir of a bicycle wheel, car doors.
Music: Building dread violins.
Narrator: His partner disagrees.
Sound: Resounding silence.
Sound: (FADE IN) Water lapping against a shoreline.
Moore: I still don’t trust him. There’s more to the story that he hasn’t told us. But the case is effectively closed, so there’s not much more we can do.
Osley: You’re just mad I was right. I’m always right.
40
The Setup: Olivia
B-Roll: (SLOW PAN) Interior design studio in LA, close-up of kitchen fixtures, pull out to frame glass door, with stylized lettering.
Text: “Olivia Hutton Designs”
FADE TO:
Interview: OLIVIA BENDER, 43 years old, wearing black-framed sunglasses, a no-nonsense pantsuit, and carrying a green leather sample bag, leaves her business and walks quickly down the streets, ignoring the camera.
Text: “Olivia Bender”
Interview: OLIVIA stops, whips off sunglasses, faces the camera head-on.
B-Roll: (SLOW PAN) Sunshine moving across the floor of a high-end kitchen.
Observational: A wineglass rolls along the marble countertop and teeters on the edge...
SMASH CUT TO:
B-Roll: Waves crash on the beach. A fine spray of water covers the camera lens. A solitary figure moves down the beach in soft focus.
FADE TO BLACK
Music: The Ting Tings, “That’s Not My Name.”
Narrator: The police were shocked when Olivia Bender left town suddenly.
Sound: Rapid footsteps, high heels on concrete.
Sound: Voice calling Olivia’s name.
Olivia: I’m not comfortable being the focus of this. Park and I have made our peace with the situation. I was crushed by the revelation of his children, and clearly, the media intrusion was too much for our marriage to bear. I had to leave. It was the only thing to do. That’s all I have to add. Please leave me alone.
Sound: Glass shattering.
Narrator: After this single brief interview, Olivia Bender declined to participate further with this documentary.
Sound: Silence.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Please be aware, what follows is a frank discussion of infertility. It may be distressing to some readers.
Life imitates art, and art imitates life. These pages belong to the characters within; these are their stories. And yet, much of what you’ve just read has its roots in reality. My reality.
I don’t like being a statistic, but I am one of 10 percent of women who suffer from infertility. Our path echoes Olivia and Park’s too closely; multiple pregnancies, multiple miscarriages, fertility treatments and IUIs, cross-country booty calls after early ovulation triggers, failed IVFs. Losing twins was the last straw; we closed up shop and forged ahead, knowing we weren’t meant to parent our own children.
We didn’t tell many of our struggles because inevitably, well-meaning and invariably kind advice was offered. No matter what you say to an infertile couple—outside of “I’m so sorry, that sucks”—it will be taken wrongly. (“You can always adopt” is particularly egregious.) It’s the hormones, you see. Pregnancy brain combined with the delightful cocktail of injectables in legs and stomachs and buttocks that bring your body to the brink of pseudo-menopause only to make your cycle start again in order to get you pregnant...homicidal tendencies have nothing on a woman in a suppression cycle.
I can look back on it now with rueful amusement. At the time, it was scary, frustrating, and painful, on many levels, physical and emotional.
Partners who are not being shot up but have their part to play, especially those providing semen, have their own delightful challenges, physical and emotional. The “Sweet Home Alabama” incident is real. It was after that particular day, in mild hysterics, that my husband mentioned this event should really make it into a book.
Honestly, we’d never planned to have children right away. That we went down the path at all can be blamed on my biological clock kicking into gear. In the library parking lot, two tiny girls in pink tutus danced across my path, and it was as if a bell rang, deep, resonating, and loud, inside of me—YOU MUST HAVE THOSE NOW. This combined with the news of the celebrity pregnancy of one of my film idols (Jennifer Garner, you adorable creature) and I found myself popping open a bottle of the good wine to propose a moratorium on birth control. I joked we’d get pregnant that first time trying, or we’d end up doing IVF. Both were true.
No doctor could pinpoint why, exactly, things didn’t work out for us. There are multiple medical anomalies in my chart: an MTHFR mutation, a clotting disorder, seminal antibodies, competitive blood types, on and on. And yet, I could get pregnant at the drop of a hat. I did, actually, quite regularly, almost every three months for several years. (You can do the math on that. I know. It’s okay. It really is. As my beloved Hemingway said, we are all strong in the broken places.)
The irony, of course, is the medication I went on for both birth control and migraine suppression in the first place probably rendered me infertile. Or I always was, and all those years of prescriptions were pointless. I suffer from celiac disease, also a known contributor to infertility. Maybe it just wasn’t meant to be.
When we decided to stop trying, I turned to my own work and produced several books in a row I am deeply proud of, and only realized after the fact, several years removed, that I was sorting through my feelings in my work. Just read A Deeper Darkness, the first Samantha Owens novel, and experience the horror she does when she loses everything, and you will know my state of mind at the time.
I turned to my work, and it gave me power.
I turned to my husband, whose grace and love sustained me. He never blamed me, even when I blamed myself.
I turned to my faith, tattered though it was, and found peace.
I turned to yoga, and found the path to enlightenment that started with taking my first honest and true breath in many, many years to the backdrop of Jeff Buckley’s rendition of “Hallelujah.” There were tears. I was cleansed.
The idea of a story based on the inciting incident, as we writers like to call it, of my darling getting off in a tiny impersonal cubicle to the strains of “Sweet Home Alabama” to provide me with a slightly designer child, wouldn’t leave me alone.
And then, at last, came Olivia.
I knew her as surely as I knew myself. I have rarely been presented with such a wholly realized character—not since Taylor Jackson pulled an Athena and sprang fully formed from my head. I saw Olivia and knew her stories as if we’d been friends for years. She was walking down a beach, alone, arms wrapped around herself. She had just suffered a heart-wrenching miscarriage. She was so very, very sad. The line appeared in my consciousness: There was blood again.
It was finally time to tell her story.
I’ve said to my husband many times over the years that I often feel handicapped as a writer because I don’t speak the same language as so many of my peers. What Liane Moriarty did in Big Little Lies, for example, the language of the school pickup line—I didn’t have that in my repertoire. I wrote characters who had children sometimes, naturally. We don’t always have to experience things firsthand to write convincingly and honestly about them; I believe this in my soul. But there was always a little something I felt I was missing.
When Olivia demanded her story be told, I had a realization. I might not be able to write comfortably about what it’s like raising children, but I sure as hell could write about what it’s like to lose them.
This is the story of a woman who cannot bear a child, despite her many attempts. It is about a marriage broken by too many things to count. It is about the family we think we need, and the ways we survive the hardest parts of living. It is a tale of obsession and a tale of betrayal.
It is also a celebration. I hope to unmask and destigmatize—no, normalize—the conversation about infertility. I promise you, whether you know it or not, a woman very close to you has suffered a miscarriage. It is something so ubiquitous as to be almost commonplace, and yet it is rarely spoken about, and treated with such abhorrence and fear that it remains in the shadows, a dirty little secret too many of us are trying to hide. It’s horrible. It’s tragic. It’s happened to virtually every woman of childbearing age—some of them without even knowing it.
Yes, I am a statistic. I am also incredibly blessed to have a loving husband, a wonderful family, and internal fortitude. I chose not to be broken by the tragedy that befell us. It was a difficult choice, but it was the only one for me. As they say, the only way out is through.
Recently, a woman who is more in tune with the things we cannot see around us did a reading for me. I was suffering from a creative block, not surprisingly whilst writing this book. Fear, most likely, of putting too much of myself out in the world.
