"The Benning Story"
A novel by E.B. Stevenson
In the autumn of 1993, partially as therapy to help me through a broken
engagement, I set about writing a novel about a shortwave radio talk show
host who has to raise three children (a son and two daughters) on his own
after his first wife, an alcoholic model, leaves the family behind for the
glamour and glitz of Hollywood.
Set between 1982 and 1994, primarily in the St. Louis metropolitan area (one
chapter is set in England in 1991), it's the story of how our hero,
internationally-known talk show host Eric Benning, deals with juggling career
and family. The story begins with the drawn-out seperation and divorce from
his first wife, Suzannah, after she bolts the family in favor of her modeling
career. She also has a drinking problem. The details of her abuse of her
family is told in the first chapter, which leads to the divorce and awarding
of custody to Eric. As a result of his responsibility to the kids, he does
not have time to re-enter the dating scene because of his career and raising
his son, Kenny, and his two daughters, Misty and Amanda (Mandy).
His immediate supervisor at work is an old friend from his high school days,
businessman Jake Zimmermann. He saw the potential Eric had as a talk show
host even as he was leaving the world of music radio behind three months
prior to Eric's seperation from Suzannah. Jake's organization is successful
in gaining an international shortwave broadcast license (the announcement
of the grant is set in 1984, the sign-on of the shortwave station set in
1985), thus increasing Eric's profile on the world stage. Eric's audience
was not to be measured in five figures, but eventually eight figures. The
divorce did have one effect on his international celebrity...Suzannah could
not be interviewed on the station because of the bitterness of the divorce.
Suzannah's problems with alcohol also led her to lose control of her senses,
as far as finances were concerned. She met a bodybuilder who began controlling
every aspect of her life. As a result, child support ends up getting severed,
followed by alimony payments to her ex-husband. Suzannah had to pay $1,300
per month to each of her three children until they turned twenty-one, and
$1,000 per month in alimony to her ex-husband until he turned fifty, regardless
of whether or not either one remarried. Her cutting off child support (set
in 1989) angered the children, and even contributed to the grade in Kenny's
sixth grade math class falling two letter grades.
As a result of Kenny's falling math grade, an emergency parent-teacher conference
(set on Valentine's Day, 1990) was set up. Little did Eric know that Mandy
and Kenny were playing matchmaker behind his back! Kenny's sixth grade teacher,
Miss Simon, turned out to be the target of their matchmaking efforts, despite
the fact that she was sixteen years younger than Eric, by that time forty-two
years old. Not only did she tell him about Kenny's problems in mathematics,
but also about her struggle in finding Mr. Right. Miss Simon, who insisted
that Eric call her Wendy, a first-year schoolteacher, eventually falls for
the divorced father of three. In a short space of time, she becomes like
one of the family, providing a romantic interest for Eric, and a mother figure
for the kids. Wendy turned out to be the exact opposite of Suzannah, loving,
kind, and knowing what's good for her, the man she loves and his
children, and what's bad for them.
The problems over child support and alimony come to a head when Suzannah
loses her modeling job in 1992. She is refused entrance into the United Kingdom
for a modeling assignment because of negative publicity generated when her
ex-husband was interviewed six months earlier in front of a national audience.
Then, the legal wheels are set in motion to collect over $155,000 in back
child support and alimony. Two of the toughest child support collectors in
California use weapons only secret agents would use to make their point.
Suzannah is roughed up by one of them, while her controlling boyfriend starts
trouble with them. It results in her debt to Eric, whom she doesn't realize
she's lost to another woman, and her three children, whom she misses dearly,
getting paid off. Her boyfriend is also sent off to jail for assaulting one
of the collectors. She finally confesses to a drinking problem in front of
a national audience, and goes to clean herself up once and for all. But,
the damage to her health has been done; her heart is weakened considerably.
Eric, on the other hand, finally marries the true love of his life, Wendy.
All three children are part of the wedding party as they exchange vows in
front of a radio and television audience estimated at two hundred million
people, as well as 750 of their closest friends and family. After the wedding
(set in the summer of 1992), Eric consents to an interview with a reporter
from New Zealand, but only after things settle down from the wedding. Wendy
enjoys her new role of stepmother to three teenagers (one of whom is away
at college), while Suzannah wants to see the children again. Eric
is reluctant to give permission for the children to visit their mother,
but eventually gives in. Suzannah is confronted with the anger and frustration
of her children for her drinking problem. For the children, she gave up her
lavish lifestyle. The visit to their natural mother (set in the summer
of 1993) is marred when Suzannah has a heart attack. Wendy gives them
good news of her own when she and Eric make the announcement (set that autumn,
on Eric's forty-sixth birthday) that she was expecting a child of her own.
The last month covers three chapters. Suzannah's sudden death from heart
failure is covered in one chapter. Eric does admit that he was never able
to forgive her for what she had done to him and the children to his audience;
he also admits that the Suzannah he knew and loved was lost a long time before
that. Covered in another chapter is the birth of Eric and Wendy's son, Eric
Junior. The last chapter covers Mandy's graduation from high school.
To read the whole novel, click
here.
The Benning Story is only available on the World Wide Web through
the N-Zero-UIH Web Site, and is not available in any store. Feel free to
copy this story for later reading.