How to Cook Your Daughter

by Jessica Hendra

  I’ll tell them that I did what I did not only for myself but for them. And without trying to make myself into some sort of martyr, that I came forward for anyone who was sexually molested. Because, as I’ll tell them, I believe that the only way to stop such abuse is to tell. Since I went public with my story, I’ve heard from others who suffered as I did. As one of the incest survivors wrote, “Never again. No more silence.” Perhaps I’ll show my daughters those letters.

  I’ll tell them how I thought a lot about what kind of mother I wanted to be as I considered whether to challenge my father’s book—that I wanted them to see me as a woman they could emulate, someone who would stand up for herself despite her fears. And then I will tell them that watching them as little girls with their daddy taught me to forgive myself for what had happened with mine. I see how they sit on their daddy’s lap, just as I had with mine. I see the easy way they snuggle with him, the instinctive way they hold out their hands for him when they’re about to cross the street, the way they reach out when they’re tired or scared. How I hear them call out for him when they wake up after a nightmare. How I see their wonderful innocence and how I know that it is our job as parents to protect it.

  In a decade or so, I will tell my daughters that the love they have for their father shows me the truth in what my therapists and close friends insisted: When a little girl who’s not yet seven loves her father, believing what he tells her is natural. And I will tell them that there was a reason I had girls who looked like me. I will tell them that they were my second chance and that I tried to do for them what I only now have been able to do for myself: make a place that was safe.

  When I began writing this book, I came to understand so much about my father. I received e-mails from old family friends—colleagues of my dad’s at the Lampoon who had listened to his banter in the 1970s and now realize they should have taken his words more seriously.

  One of them, Ted Mann, recounted a stroll with my father. He wrote to me: “As we walked down Madison Avenue, Tony remarked, ‘I have fucked three women today.’ I asked, ‘Was any of these your wife?’ Your father responded, ‘No, but one of them was my daughter.’ I assure you,” he told me in an e-mail, “I gave the remark no credence at the time.”

  Another former friend of my father’s, Valerie Marchant, e-mailed me a letter that she was sending to a New York newspaper after she read the New York Times story. Valerie, who remains close to my mother and me—and who had, those many years ago in our yard in New Jersey, pounded on our barn with a croquet mallet—wrote that “everyone who knew the family had witnessed Tony treating Jessie in social situations in a way that was very disturbing. She was his girl. Nothing you could report to a police officer, but something that made you very uneasy and would be identified in later years as emotional incest.”

  Valerie’s boyfriend at the time, long-time Lampoon editor Sean Kelly, also wrote me. He recalled my dad coming into a Lampoon staff meeting after it had started. “Sorry I’m late, lads. I was home playing hide the bologna with the daughters.” Sean wrote that he had “developed something of a theory” about my father, whom he refers to as T. H. “It’s why I absolutely believe you,” he wrote, “and how I can’t feel anything but painful hate for him.

  I think that when he was an adolescent, those Catholic monks really did get to him—that is, they exposed him to a marvelous (if imaginary) universe—something like Middle Earth or Dungeons and Dragons, or the Great Game of Kipling’s Kim. A Universe with a fantastic, intricate (and feudal) back story, a Universe you can only access by learning a secret code language (Latin), a Universe in which Ultimate Evil is the opponent, and only a few vulnerable, misunderstood heroes are fighting against it: the Catholics, including you. The problem with all of that is that as you begin to grow up, it gradually—or in a flash—occurs to you that the whole business in utterly preposterous. And still you long for it—the certainty about what’s Good and Evil, an understanding of “what it all means.” The Big Picture.

  I think (from any number of things T. H. said and did in my presence) that he wanted to prove the existence of Good by establishing the existence of Evil. If he deliberately and gratuitously lied—and he did, all the time—it implies the possibility of Truth. If he repeatedly cheated and stole (and he did) it was to suggest that there is, out there somewhere, Honesty.

  If he betrayed everyone close to him—wife, friends, collaborators—it establishes the possibility of Loyalty. Over-indulge in every substance—food, drink, dope—and your gluttony suggests that there must be such a virtue as Temperance. If you know there’s a Hell—because you live there—it at least proves that there must be a Heaven. In my experience, T. H. would size up any situation, and invariably proceed to do the WORST POSSIBLE THING under the circumstances—and all to prove the Existence of Good Old God.

  I have never blamed the church for my father’s behavior, not after coming to know Father Joe and the boundless love he offered Dad and me. Still, Sean made me see how my father might be intent on using his religion, as though he wished to do harm—to himself and to others—if only so that he could repent.

  I also learned a great lesson from my father’s failures—a lesson that has helped me find the morality that was once so absent in my life. Now, I have an overwhelming desire to call people I haven’t spoken to in years and—just like a member of Alcoholics Anonymous might—make the sort of amends that my father never considered. And for the first time, I started seeing incest as something that happened to more people than just me. I found the statistics on the Internet and read the newsletters of survivors. The numbers horrified me.

  Late this summer, my mother came over to my house with two grocery bags. Inside were pictures from my childhood, some letters, and some old diaries. Two were mine; one was my father’s. My mom put them down and said, “I thought you might like to go through this stuff, Jessica,” but instead we both simply stood there, looking down at a past we still couldn’t understand.

  I thought of my mother packing all these remnants of her twenty-year marriage when she moved from the loft in New York to her new house in California. I imagined her sitting on the floor, picking up each picture of my father, and wondering whether to toss it or keep it. I thought about how she called me after the New York Times piece came out, and I remembered the catch in her voice. “I’m scared, Jessica,” she had said. “I thought Tony was out of my life and now he’s back because of all this. I feel like I’m back in the whole nightmare.” I knew that I would have to be the one to go through the bags. Later that night, when everyone was asleep, I did.

  The pictures of my sister and me as children made my heart hurt. We both looked so vulnerable, so young. I looked at my school picture from when I was six or seven, and it made me want to cry. There I was with my crossed eye, my crooked smile, and my wispy white-blond hair. I wanted to crawl into the picture and hold the hand of that little girl, take her on my lap, and tell her that she’d done nothing wrong. In her school picture, my sister, Kathy, looked awkward and chubby, with thick glasses and stringy hair. I don’t believe my father ever sexually molested Kathy, but his words had beaten her down, year after year. I wanted to crawl into her picture too and tell her the things that my father never said: that she was beautiful and smart. That she was loved. I put the pictures back in the box and walked through the house and into my daughters’ room. There they lay, sleeping, with hot faces and wrinkled nighties. I kissed them both. Then I went back into the office and picked up my father’s diary.

  Masking tape secured the book’s broken binding. Its cover was light purple with block letters that read Schooltime Compositions. Beneath it, next to NAME, SCHOOL, and CLASS, my father had written TONY HENDRA, LIFE, and UPPER MIDDLE. I opened it slowly and saw the first entry, dated June 1981. I recognized my father’s elegant but almost illegible handwriting in various colors of ink. I closed the diary and put it on the floor. Should I read it?

  I felt overwhelmed by the predicament. It was his d
iary, for God’s sake—his private thoughts and feelings not meant for others to read or to judge. But what if it contained a confession? Even though it was from 1981, about ten years after he first molested me, perhaps he might refer to what he had done. It would prove he was lying when he denied it to the New York Times. It would prove that I was telling the truth. And maybe, just maybe, even if there were no confession, it might finally help me understand my father.

  I picked it up again, but this time, I didn’t open it. It didn’t seem right, but it also didn’t matter. I put it in a brown envelope and wrote my father’s address on it. I’d had enough of my father’s words to last me a lifetime. I had given him so many chances to speak to me honestly. His final words to me, that we’d never speak again on this earth, told me precisely where he stood. On this day and every day after, his words would no longer matter.

  Instead, I decided to write him a letter that I suspect I’ll never send.

  Dear Dad:

  I’m not sure how to start a letter that I know you’ll never read. Maybe the best way is to just ask you all the questions you haven’t been willing to answer.

  Why did you molest me, Daddy? Why did you take me, your little girl who loved you so much, and hurt me so terribly? What were you thinking when you slipped beside me in my little bed and touched me like that? Did you hate me? Did you think I could erase from my memory the way it felt to be touched like that by my daddy? Did you ever really think it didn’t matter?

  I have asked myself these questions for thirty-two years, Dad. I have spent so much of my adult life trying to figure out who you are and how and why you did what you did. I still have no answers. Only you can answer those questions, Dad, and I know you never will. You are not brave enough to tell the truth. You will continue to hide behind the lie that you are not a man who is or ever was capable of doing such a thing. Instead, you will continue to call me crazy and unstable—pathological even. You will do what you have always done: make your sexual abuse of me my problem, not yours.

  But now it is your problem, Dad. I hand it over to you. I have lived with it, thought about it, and relived it in my head. I have made myself vomit because of it, starved myself, and hated myself so much that I wanted to die. I give you back the shame, Dad. It always belonged to you. I know that now, and I am free.

  I have spoken out and told my story, and I pity what you’re now going through. I regret that people have to know this about you, but I could not keep your secret any more. Your secret almost killed me, and I’m sorry it had to come to this, Dad. But I gave you so many chances to accept responsibility, to even in some small way make things better, to help me when I came to you. Instead, you chose to discount what you did, to minimize it, to make me feel inadequate because I couldn’t get over it. To my face, you never denied it, and I was grateful for that at least. But of course, by writing Father Joe, you took back whatever small solace that offered, and today you are denying it to the world.

  I don’t know whether there’s anything you could have done to make up for what you did. Maybe the moment you touched me like that the damage was irreversible. But I am, despite it all, an idealist. I believe in what Father Warrilow, the man we both knew, preached: that everything can be forgiven. But first, there has to be acknowledgment, real acknowledgment, of the transgression. Only then can forgiveness be possible.

  I don’t hate you, Dad. I’m just sad. I wish I could look back at my childhood, at my life with you, and take the good things and leave the rest. I try embracing the interesting aspects of my Lampoon childhood, what it was like being the daughter of a brilliant and funny man, an educated and, in some ways, sensitive man. But in the end, I only feel confused. How do I reconcile the witty historian, the magnificent conversationalist, the wonderful storyteller with the reckless alcoholic, the drug abuser, the man who sexually abused his daughter? Did I ever really know you?

  Your power over me is finally at an end, Daddy. I don’t believe the things you told me anymore, that I just wanted to see myself “as a victim” or that I should be ashamed of myself for “continually picking at the same old wound.” I believed what you said for years and years. But your voice is gone from my head, and I found my own voice now, Dad. It tells me that I’m not a failure or a loser or a victim and that I’m done suffering from my memories.

  During that call in New York, you said we will never speak again on this earth. I accept that. I know now that the only way for me to ever see you again, to ever even try to have a relationship with you, would be for you to finally tell the truth. And I feel certain that won’t happen.

  So I say good-bye, Daddy, not in anger but with resignation.

  I knew since I was seven that you’d be mad if I told.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  FIRST, MY DEEPEST GRATITUDE TO MY HUSBAND, KURT, for his boundless love and support. My warmest thanks to Blake Morrison, without whose guidance, encouragement, and dedication this book would not have come to fruition. Also to my agent, Sterling Lord, for his belief in this project; to my editor, Cassie Jones, for her meticulous eye and hard work; and to Judith Regan, for giving me the opportunity to tell my story. I salute my oldest and dearest friends, Krisztina, Iana, Alison, and Gage, for their loyalty. To Rudy Maxa, Jonathan W., Bob Faggen, Jim Gaynor, Valerie Marchant, Ted Mann, Sean Kelly, Michael Strober, Angela Bonavoglia, and Amy Solomon. To my stepfather, Bill Pierce; to my sister, Katherine, and her husband, Peter; to Al, Enid, and all the Fuller family—in appreciation for your compassion. Thanks to Rachelle Benveniste for inspiring me. Lastly, I wish to acknowledge my mother, Judith, for her courage.

  —JESSICA HENDRA

  Thanks to my wonderful wife, Bernadette, whose love, patience, support, and kindness make every day special. Thanks to my father and mother, Jim and Arline Morrison, for fostering in me a love of the language. Thanks to my agent, Sterling Lord, whose wisdom, encouragement, and belief in me proved priceless. Thanks to Cassie Jones, the sort of editor who elevates the work and the spirit, and to Vivian Gomez for the care she gave to every page. And thanks most of all to Jessica Hendra for allowing me to help her tell her story. As we worked together, Jessica, my respect and admiration for you only grew. I hope this book allows others to see the woman I have come to know: a fantastic mother, a loving wife, a trusted friend, and a forgiving daughter who values the truth above everything else.

  —BLAKE MORRISON

  About the Authors

  Jessica Hendra lives with her husband and two daughters in Los Angeles, California.

  Blake Morrison is a journalist who lives with his wife outside Washington, D.C.

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

  Copyright

  HOW TO COOK YOUR DAUGHTER. Copyright © 2005 by Jessica Hendra and Blake Morrison. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  EPub © Edition JANUARY 2009 ISBN: 9780061974816

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