There was only one slight drawback, in my mind, which was that Dror was around more often than I would have liked. I enjoyed the girl time, but he and Virginia came as a set. Wherever she was, he was usually not too far away. And whenever he was with us, he dominated the conversation with talk about filmmaking. I tried to be polite and seem engaged, but I’d never been a big movie fan and the business side of moviemaking didn’t interest me. My business was insurance, not Hollywood, but Dror aimed to change that.
After months of friendly lunches and dinners, Dror asked if I would be willing to meet with some people he was considering doing business with. He said he had a film deal in the works and a plan to start his own production company. He admired my good judgment and business acumen. Mostly out of my loyalty to Virginia, I agreed to help, even though, I pointed out, I didn’t know anything about the movie industry, nor did I have any interest in it.
One day, over lunch, Dror invited me to “consult” on the film project he had under way. It was a thriller called Not Forgotten, for which Simon Baker, famous for the hit TV series The Mentalist, had been cast in the lead role. It was a surefire hit—backed by a bond with international distributors on board, which he explained was a filmmaker’s dream. Distribution deals were tough to get, he said. They guaranteed the film would have a wide release in theaters in the U.S. and abroad, which was what lenders looked for before agreeing to finance a project. With my business savvy, he said, I would be a real asset in helping him raise funds. I thanked him for his confidence but said I lacked both the time and expertise in the film industry.
A short time later, Dror invited me to a meeting with a wealthy and well-respected businessman who was also a top donor in the church. I was impressed. “Is he going to be involved in the film project?” I asked. Dror said it looked like it. “Let me know when and where and I’ll be there,” I said.
The meeting took place at the man’s Spanish-style estate in the La Cañada hills. It was a turning point for me. The man appeared to have great respect for Dror and total confidence in the movie. If he was behind it, I thought, maybe I needed to take a closer look to see what was in it for me.
When I expressed an interest, Dror seized on it. He said the way he’d figured it out, with the help of some financial experts, the deal would pay double-digit returns a couple of years after the film’s release. He had already signed on A-list actors and an executive producer who owned over 1,200 theaters in the U.S., and distribution was certain.
The timing was right. It was late summer of 2007 and the robust economy of the previous decade was showing signs of strain. Lax lending practices had led to debt obligations in the hands of people who were unable to pay them. The housing bubble was starting to deflate and investors whose pockets were deep with mortgage-backed securities were worried. Investors who’d made a killing in mutual funds, including many of my own clients, were nervously watching their portfolios decline and asking about alternative investments. I thought Dror’s deal was something to consider.
I decided that I would introduce the film opportunity to some of my high-end clients and family, like my father, as a great “extra thing” they might want to take a look at as a possible investment to prop up their declining annuities. Between guaranteed distribution, top actors and a script by the writer who worked with Scientologist Paul Haggis on the movie Crash, the deal, which Dror sold as “no risk,” seemed like no-brainer.
I did a huge amount of due diligence. I spoke to attorneys, friends and even my VP, and everyone thought it looked good. I also trusted Dror because that’s what we did as Scientologists. To question the integrity of a fellow Scientologist was an affront to the church. “Mutual trust is the firmest building block in human relationships,” L. Ron Hubbard said. “Without it, the whole structure comes down.”
Putting my faith in Dror would turn out to be a colossal mistake and one for which I would pay an awful price. At the same time, our friendship helped me to make one of the best decisions of my life. He and Virginia encouraged me to follow through with my dream of adopting a baby girl.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Savannah
One of the greatest moments of my life was when I looked into the face of my new baby girl for the first time. It was Monday, October 2, 2006. I was sitting in the rocking chair in the hospital room when a nurse picked the baby up from her bassinet and placed her in my arms. I’d never held such a tiny baby. She was wrapped in a blanket with a knit cap on her head, but I could tell how very small she was. Sage was nearly double her size at birth. I got the feeling she was confused. Who am I? Where am I? What’s this all about? Cradling her in my right arm, I placed my left hand on her head. At that moment I felt as though we were the only two people in the room. Sean and the nurses seemed to have faded out of the picture. “Do you feel this beautiful little head?” I asked her. “That beautiful little nose? Those beautiful little lips?” Scientology taught me to get in touch with the body in order to get in touch with the soul. But this was more than a religious ritual. This was a mother’s instinct.
I continued caressing the baby’s soft brown skin. Your beautiful arms. Your beautiful hands. Your beautiful fingers. Your beautiful feet. When I finally reached her toes, she peeled one eye open. “Hi, little Savannah,” I said. “That’s your name! Savannah! I’m going to be your mommy.” The hours-old child looked into my eyes. “I promise to always take care of you,” I said. “We will be so happy together.” Suddenly, stunningly, her mouth turned up in a half grin. It was as if she understood all that I had told her, as if I had touched her soul. A nurse’s voice broke the silence in the room. “Oh my goodness!” she said. “I have never seen a newborn smile like that!” Both of us started to cry.
Through my tears, I noticed my attorney walking toward me. It was time to give the baby back, he said. Time to meet the birth mom. I could barely stand the thought of letting her go. Looking at her sweet little mushed-up newborn face, all I could think was that she had been given up once and now I had to hand her back to the nurse and walk away. What is she thinking? Is she afraid? My tears turned to sobs. Is my beautiful little girl going to think I’m abandoning her when I just promised that I would always be there for her?
“It’s only until tomorrow,” my attorney said, trying to comfort me.
I pulled my baby close. “Savannah,” I whispered, “I will be back. I promise I will be back tomorrow to take you home.”
* * *
I had learned about the baby’s birth only a few hours earlier. I was at the Burbank airport, having just returned from a business trip to Dallas, and waiting at the luggage carousel when my cell phone rang. I saw that it was Durand Cook, an adoption attorney I’d once met over the phone. The actress Catherine Bell had heard the scuttlebutt in the church that Sean and I were looking to adopt, so she approached me one afternoon at the Celebrity Centre to say her stepfather was an adoption attorney in Beverly Hills and she thought he might be able to help me. Sean liked the idea that Durand was somehow attached to Catherine Bell and all of a sudden he was more interested in the idea of adoption. Catherine was a naturally beautiful woman, and Sean spoke of her looks to me quite often. Looking back now, I realize that he was trying to impress her. Catherine had oohed and aahed about the idea of adoption. As we were driving home, I asked Sean where this new state of mind regarding adopting had come from.
“I’ve been giving it some thought, and although I would rather have our own, I think we should help a child that needs a home.”
That this came out of Sean Seward’s mouth was surprising to me, but if he was going to give me an inch, I would take a mile—yet I knew I needed to be calm and not get too excited, or he would back down. “Okay, so would you like me to reach out to Durand and set up a meeting for us?” I held my breath.
Sean paused, the way he always did. He liked to make me wait when he knew that I was on the edge of my seat for an answer.
“Why don’t you meet with Durand and then you can let me know how it goes?”
I started to get a little worried that he was slipping away from the idea.
“But he will want to meet us both, and I’m sure there are classes and things we have to do to be prepared.” My voice was getting higher as I felt myself starting to plead.
I could see the veins popping out in his temples from clenching his teeth and I knew I needed to get him back on track.
“I have an idea. Why don’t I talk to Catherine? I’ll get her to explain to her stepdad who we are and that I will handle everything for now. How’s that?” I begged.
A long silence was broken by Sean saying, “Okay.”
Durand and I had a phone conversation that same week. I could tell that Catherine had spoken highly of me, and Durand never asked to meet with Sean and me together. He did warn, as I’d anticipated, that adopting a baby could be a long, expensive process. When I received the application package Durand had put in the mail, I was so excited I immediately ran upstairs to Sean, where he was playing a computer game. Even though I knew interrupting him was a no-no, I plopped down on the floor and started reading the application questions to him.
“What’s your mother’s maiden name again?”
No response.
“Sean, please take a minute to talk to me. This is very important—I need to fill out the paperwork for our application to adopt a baby.”
As his fingers were frantically moving to kill something in his game, his character died. “FUCK!” he screamed. “I’ve just let my whole team down because you interrupted me!
“I don’t give a shit about your application!” Sean screamed as he frantically logged back on to his game. “You want information, then you call my mom! I’ve told you before. You want to adopt, then you handle it. I don’t have time for this!”
“Sean, please don’t get mad. This is about a baby and not about some fake game!” I knew the minute the words came out of my mouth there would be hell to pay. I literally ran from the room and shut the door, hoping that the pull of his game was more important than dealing with me. I knew I had to get out of the house with Sage and fill out the application on my own.
After looking over the paperwork and the “happy family” pictures I’d enclosed, Durand called me again a few weeks later.
“I noticed on your application that you said you would take an African-American child,” he said. “Why?”
I explained that, for many years, I’d thought about adopting a black child. For some reason I’d always imagined myself with an African daughter. My best friends growing up were black, as was my best friend in the church, and I loved reading about Africa and its rich mixture of cultures. I loathed racial discrimination and I wanted my children to grow up amid diversity, I said. Durand sighed.
He explained that he had a client, a woman with African heritage who’d had a one-night stand during a trip to Las Vegas and gotten pregnant. She wanted to give the baby up for adoption at birth. Unfortunately, he said, a family in Canada had already started the process of adopting the child. He wished he’d seen my application earlier. “I’ll call you if anything else comes up,” he said.
Then, on that October day, Durand called again, his voice urgent.
“Michelle, where are you?” he asked.
“I’m at the airport,” I said. “Why? What’s going on?”
Durand explained that a baby girl had been born recently and she was available for adoption.
He needed a decision right away. “Are you interested?” he asked.
I didn’t hesitate. “Of course!” I said.
“Michelle!” he said. “She’s an African-American baby girl.”
I was overcome with emotion.
“Oh my God, Durand!” I cried. “This is my child! It’s her!”
I asked when the baby was born.
“Thirty minutes ago,” he said.
“Where do I need to fly to see her?” I asked.
“She’s right here at St. Francis hospital in Lynwood,” he said. I knew of the area, but I’d only driven through on my way up and down the California coast.
“I need you and Sean to get here right away,” the lawyer said.
“I’m coming,” I replied.
Despite the cracks in my marriage, I kept telling myself that bringing a child into even an unhappy marriage was better than a baby languishing in foster care.
I hadn’t expected things to move so quickly, but I was beside myself with joy. My exhilaration was tempered only slightly by the trepidation I felt about telling Sean. He was indecisive by nature and we couldn’t afford to waste time while he tried to make up his mind. The baby was available now and I felt she was meant to be mine. I couldn’t let the opportunity slip through my fingers.
Sean and I didn’t have a normal couple’s way of communicating. Partially because I didn’t want to be yelled at and he didn’t want to be bothered during his daily computer games, everything was done by text. In hindsight, I feel embarrassed that I texted him rather than calling him about something so important, but this was how our relationship functioned at that time and I didn’t want to do anything to harm our chance of adopting this baby. At least by texting I could gauge his reaction before we actually talked. “Baby girl just born,” I wrote. “She’s ours! Meet me at St. Francis in Lynwood.”
I grabbed my bags, rushed to my car and quickly got on the road. I was giddy with excitement and I wanted to share my news with someone who would revel in it with me. I called my sister, and for the hour-long drive we batted around possible names for the baby. Elia. India. Savannah? Yes, that was it. Her name would be Savannah. Closing in on the hospital, I ended the call with my sister and called Sean’s cell.
“Where are you?” I asked. “Are you almost at the hospital?”
I met him in the parking lot. I could tell he was in a sour mood.
I was over the moon and I tried to get him excited too. At least he had come! I was certain that once he met the baby he would fall in love with her and any anger he’d felt would evaporate. My heart pounded with anticipation and exhilaration as we walked into the hospital lobby. Durand was waiting for us there with the sweetest, most welcoming smile. I’d never met him in person, but I felt as if we were longtime friends, bonded by the beautiful child I was about to meet.
Durand and I embraced. He led Sean and me into a small conference room. He handed us the birth mother’s medical records. He said that when she first realized she was pregnant, she inquired about having an abortion, but she was too far along, nearly four months. After that, she’d made every prenatal medical appointment. She had no history of drug or alcohol abuse. She admitted she’d had a single glass of wine before she knew she was carrying a child, but that was all. All she remembered about her one-night stand in Las Vegas was that he was tall, handsome and black. She didn’t even know his name. She hadn’t seen the baby and didn’t want to. She just wanted to get this over with and resume her normal life.
“This is the baby you told me about,” I said. “The one who was being adopted by the Canadian couple?”
“Yes,” he said. “That fell through.”
The fact that there was no history of addiction and no sign of fetal alcohol syndrome was a huge relief to me. I didn’t want a special-needs child. Scientology held that someone with afflictions was being punished for “poor ethics.” I’d seen my fellow Scientologists shake their heads condescendingly when they saw a special-needs child. “Must’ve ‘pulled it in,’” they’d say, meaning it was the child’s fault for attracting the misfortune, probably a transgression in a previous lifetime that had never been “handled.”
When I was finished asking questions, Durand pulled out the adoption papers for Sean and me to sign. Sean hadn’t said a word the whole time. I asked for a moment alone with him. We were about to make a life-cha
nging decision and I wanted to make sure he was on board.
“Look at me, Sean,” I said, when Durand left the room. “This is the time to say it if you are not ready to do this. You have to tell me now. You can’t tell me after we’ve seen the baby and met the birth mother. There’s a lot at stake here. A lot of people’s lives are involved, including an innocent child. Once we sign the papers, there’s no turning back.”
Sean remained quiet. His eyes were vacant.
“Well?” I asked. “Sean, please say something. What are you thinking?”
“I’m fine,” he said absently.
I foolishly took his response as a sign that he was coming around. Once he saw our child, everything would be fine.
But Sean didn’t even try to connect with the baby. The whole time I held her, he stood off in a corner with his arms folded across his chest. When I asked if he wanted to hold her, he shook his head and said, in a frosty voice, “No, that’s okay.” I understood that I’d put Sean in a difficult position by agreeing to the adoption without first consulting him, but I hoped he would give it a chance. I needed to know now that he was at least willing to try.
Before I got the chance to question Sean further, Durand said it was time to meet the birth mother. The three of us headed upstairs. My head was spinning as we approached the room. I wondered what she would think of us. What would she look like? How would she act? Would she like me? Would she be leery because we were white?
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