How to Cook Your Daughter (22 page)
Read How to Cook Your Daughter Online
Authors: Jessica Hendra
The first two or three visits were spent getting to know each other. I told him some of my background, but not the most important things.
I told him how I thought about food all the time, wondered what other people were eating, counted every calorie, and couldn't stop weighing myself. Dr. Shaffer told me it was quite rare to have such a severe onset of anorexia at my age (I was then twenty-eight). And I explained that I had been bulimic for years and that I considered anorexia a step in the right direction. He looked unconvinced. Shaffer felt that I would do better out of the ward, but he warned that if my weight went down much more, he would admit me as a patient.
I liked Shaffer. He was easy to talk to without being patronizing, and he was understanding without being condescending. He also seemed completely unsentimental without being cold. He was reserved but had a sense of humor, and he knew or could anticipate every anorexic trick. He told me to add three Power Bars a day to my diet, knowing that I might add a half of one. He said I must get rid of the scale in our house and got me in touch with a nutritionist whom I was to see twice a week. And I thought often about what Kurt had said that night in Williamstownâthat I needed to tell someone what had happened with my father.
Finally, I decided to do itâto tell him the whole story. All the details. Everything I had left out before. I was terrified that Dr. Shaffer, this objective psychiatrist, would blame me for what had happened. So I turned around on the couch, faced the wall and began to gather my story.
I remembered my life backward, from the last time I had confronted my father at Aunt Celia's, back to my teenage years, when he slipped me some coke the night he told me he was leaving my mother. Back to the days when I first started bingeing and purging. Back to the night just before I turned seven. Back to the piece he had written for the
Lampoon
just a few months before. He had called it “How to Cook
Your Daughter,” and it started this way:
A recurrent problem facing the gourmet who wishes to prepare this excellent dish is the difficulty he experiences in obtaining a daughter
.
“When I was really little, I remember one night in the country, in New Jersey, when I was sleeping in my bunk bed.” I paused for a moment to see what Dr. Shaffer might say. He said nothing, and I closed my eyes and saw it all again.
â¦
People so often ask, “How do I tell when my daughter is ready for the table?” Well, there's always some little variation, but generally the exact age falls somewhere between the fifth and sixth birthdays
â¦.
“It was just before my seventh birthday,” I continued, “and it was dark, except for some moonlight that was coming through the window.” I opened my eyes. I was still on the brown, cloth couch in his office. I closed them again and was back in the bunk.
“I thought I heard voices from my parents' room.” I spoke to the wall in Dr. Shaffer's office, my eyes still closed. “It was right next door to ours. There was just a door between our rooms, no hallway or anything. Then I saw my dad open the bedroom door and close it behind him. I remember his silhouette, but I could tell he was dressed even though it was late. I knew he was going out, maybe even all the way into the city, and that I'd spend the whole night worrying about him and wondering if he was okay, and that in the morningâ¦in the morning I would ask my mom when he would be home. And she'd say she didn't know.”
â¦
During this period the daughter acquires a smooth firmness totally free of flab or muscle, especially in the shoulders, buttocks, and thighs, areas which are the gourmet's delight
â¦
“So I sat up in my bed and called out to him quietly.” I could see
him stop and look toward my bed, then walk toward me. “He came and stood by the side of the bunk bed, and I said, âWhere are you going, Daddy?'” I could hear myself say it in that little-girl's voice. “And he said, âI'm just going out for a minute love.' I told him I didn't want him to go, and he said he would come lie down with me.” I stopped for a moment and took a deep breath.
“I snuggled into his arms, and he asked for a kiss,” I told Dr. Shaffer. “But then he kissed me again in a way that wasâ¦really hard.” My voice shook. “On my lips.”
I paused and breathed deeply again. “He undid his pants and pulled out his penis.” I began to cry as I sat on my therapist's couch, and I closed my eyes so tightly I was scrunching them shut.
â¦
Signs that the daughter has reached the ideal point are: The flesh will be soft but resist a pinch somewhat, returning to its full shape immediately upon release
â¦
“He put his hand under my nightie, and I asked him not to because it made me feel so cold, his hand was so cold.” I paused again. The next part seemed the hardest, and I could feel my father next to me, even here on the couch. “Then he whispered into my ear, âTake off your nightie, Jessie.' But I wouldn't. I didn't want to. So he said it again. âTake off your nightie, Jessie. Take it off or I won't stay here. I'll go out.'”
I remembered how confused I had felt, as though I knew he was doing something wrong. But it was Daddy. And if he told me things were okay, I believed him. I'd do almost anything to keep him from going out. I think he was counting on that.
â¦.
An ancient and surprisingly accurate test of readiness is to hold the buttocks one in each hand and squeeze gently. If the daughter
says “Grrrugchllllchlll,” she is not yet quite ready. If she slaps your face, you have missed your opportunity
â¦
“I started whimpering, but I sat up and pulled off my nightie.” I was talking so low now that I wasn't even sure Dr. Shaffer could hear me. “Then my dad told me to take off my underwear. I didn't want to. I told him that. But he said he'd leave if I didn't. So I pulled off my panties.”
â¦.
Now turn your daughter on her tummy in a kneeling position so that her head rests on her handsâ¦. If she giggles at this point, reprimand her. Then scatter the sliced papaya all over her and rub the liqueur wherever you likeâ¦
I took another breath, this time deeper than all the others, and went on. “My dad startedâ¦feeling around my body and then, then he put his finger in my vagina and pushed it up a little bit. And I remember he whispered, âYou're too small.' So he took my hand and put it on his penis.”
â¦.
Unless you're really abnormal, you will find that during this preparation the daughter becomes increasingly appetizing
â¦
As I told the story, I started to feel sick, like I was going to vomit. My body shook. “It was all hard and kind of sticky, and I was terrified. He moved my hand up and down it a bit. Then he took my head in his hands and pushed it toward his penis and whispered for me to put my mouth on it.” This time I sighedâa huge, painful sigh, as if I were breathing my last breath. “I said I didn't want to, but he said it was okay because that's what people do if they love each other. So I did what he said, I put it in my mouth. It tastedâ¦strong, and I was so scared.”
The tears streamed down my cheeks.
“Then I tasted this sticky stuff, and it oozed out of my mouth and
down my chin. I swallowed some of it and felt myself gag. And then I remember wiping my chin on my patchwork quilt.” I pulled a tissue from the box of Kleenex and wiped my eyes.
“My father pulled me back to him and held me. He hugged me and stroked my hair. I was crying, and he said it again; he said âIt's okay, love. That's what people do when they love each other.'” As I spoke, I held my head in my hands and tried to wipe away tears that wouldn't stop. “He kept telling me everything was okay, but even then, I knew that it wasn't.”
â¦.
At this point, the daughter will probably want to get up and go to the bathroom or play something else like prince and princess. If so, let her get up off the platter and give her some chocolate. If not, eat her.
“After awhile, we went downstairs to the kitchen together, and he got me some water. The kitchen was cold and dark, and I remember thinking that it must've been very late by then.” I sat up a little straighter on the couch, feeling as though the worst was over. “I remember my dad was just wearing a towel, and he made himself a drink, and I think I felt a little better. I wanted so much to believe him when he said it was what people did when they loved each other.”
I needed Dr. Shaffer to understand. “I loved him so much. Then I got tired and told him I wanted to go to bed. So he came and tucked me in.”
There. It was over. But my tears wouldn't stop. I sat with my back to Dr. Shaffer, still facing the wall, crying and crying and crying. It had been so shocking for me to hear the story out loud, to hear myself telling it, to see it all again in my mind's eye. And now, Dr. Shaffer would tell me what I always knew: that it
had
been my fault, that I
had
asked for it. I remember thinking, or maybe I said it aloud,
Kathy never would have taken off her underwear. She would have just let him go out. She was always stronger than me.
But I couldn't stop sobbing, and Dr. Shaffer said nothing.
He just let me cry.
JUNE 2004
THE DAY AFTER HE SENT MY PIECE TO THE
NEW YORK
Times,
I heard back from Rudy. The opinion's page editor said he was “absolutely shocked,” Rudy told me. And the editor, David Shipley, thought my letter merited a full-blown story. I knew what I had written could not have been published as an Op-Ed piece. It was just too incriminating (not to mention too long). Rudy had sent it to Shipley more as a place to start than because we thought he would consider publishing it as it was. I knew that claims such as mine would and should be investigated. I was scared about what might happen next. But I also was grateful. The
New York Times
was treating what happened to me more seriously than my father ever had.
It had been eleven years since I had recounted for Dr. Shaffer the details of what happened. Like Kurt, he had told me in the days and weeks after that it hadn't been my fault. But much as I wished for one,
I hadn't had a miraculous recovery. In fact, I lost even more weight, and Dr. Shaffer threatened to hospitalize me. I called my mother and asked her to come to Los Angeles. She knew how sick I was. On the first of our joint visits to Dr. Shaffer, I told her that Daddy had molested me, but I didn't offer any details. She took it in as she always hadâquietly, soberly. Kurt also came with me to see Dr. Shaffer a few times. But the person who should have been there was not.
Dr. Shaffer thought it might be helpful to confront my father again. I had told him of my father's Jekyll-and-Hyde reaction in England during the trip to Celia's, but we decided I should write Dad a letter, if only to see how he responded. I did, and the reply was blistering. Just like the e-mails we exchanged after
Father Joe
was published, he didn't deny what he had done. But in the letter, he launched into a tirade about how I wanted to see myself as a victim, how I longed to be part of the “Sally-Jessy-Raphael culture,” how my problems were not his fault, how I needed to conquer my disorders by myself. Dr. Shaffer and I read the letter together. After a moment, he looked at me. “I don't think you will ever get the response you want from this man, Jessica,” Dr. Shaffer said. “He is a true, textbook narcissist, not able to empathize with you or really take responsibility for anything. He is not capable of it.”
I knew Dr. Shaffer was right, but I refused to give up. I wrote back and so did Dadâthis time with a response that essentially said I was making a big deal over nothing. Then he admonished me to never, ever say a word about it to his wife, Carla.
Finally, one last letter came. Kurt and I were set to travel to New York for my sister's, Kathy, wedding. Dad would be there, as would Carla. The afternoon before we were to leave, FedEx delivered his latest missive, this one telling me once and for all that I was a failure, a
pathetic whiner, and that he was blameless. I couldn't stand to be there with everyone, so I cancelled our tickets and called Kathy to tell her I wasn't able to come. I told her why, what had happened with Daddy, but again not in detail. Kathy tried to be sympathetic, but I could tell she was angry. As she reminded me, she had made a lot of effort to come to my wedding.
I realized that unless I relented, unless I simply did as my father suggested, I would always be the family spoiler. And so I tried to move on with my life, just as Daddy wanted, just as he had told me in England after Mass, in letters back and forth, in the tone that he took, in the words that he used.
With Dr. Shaffer's reluctant permission, I took a part in a play in a regional theater in Sonora, a city five hours north of Dr. Shaffer, my husband, and L.A. I would be on my own, and unable to make our counseling sessions. But Dr. Shaffer acquiesced, as long as I agreed to drive back to Los Angeles now and then and to check in on the phone once a week. Kurt also would be coming to visit, and Dr. Shaffer trusted him to assess my situation.
I brought my habits with me to Sonora. I'd been given housing by a supporter of the theater, a seventy-something widower who settled me comfortably in his guest room before heading east to visit his grandchildren. Before he set out, he told me to help myself to anything in his house. I investigated the “bad” foods in Bob's kitchen and swore not to touch the cookie dough ice cream or Twinkies. Instead, I continued to slice my breakfast apple into tiny pieces, each to be eaten with a fork. For lunch it was salad. For dinner, a plain bagel that I cut it into four equal partsâone section to be eaten before the show, one to be nibbled during intermission, and the remaining two for after the curtain fell. The cast must have noticed the way I parceled out my
lone bagel, but, of course, I found my behavior unremarkable. I continued to run six miles a day, and came home exhausted, my head spinning from lack of fuel.
I called Dr. Shaffer each week, telling him the same things I had told him in his office: how scared I was to gain weight, to break all the food rules I had set for myself. I told him how I wanted to be someone with no needs at allâfor food, for love, for anyone or anything. I told him how I thought my need for my father's love had made me complicit in his molestation of me, that if I had been a “stronger person” it never would have happened. I told him I still felt weak, that, even at age twenty-nine, I hated myself for my neediness. And I told him how I simply wanted to be invisible, to take up no space in the world, to become a tiny, emotionless thing. During the calls, I worried out loud that if I began to eat more, I would simply binge and become bulimic again. Dr. Shaffer suggested I try Prozac, but it only made me feel nervous and even more anxious than usual. I had two car accidents in a week. And when Kurt told him that I hadn't gained a pound, Dr. Shaffer decided to make a “house call” to northern California.
We sat in a small cafe in town, and Dr. Shaffer told me that I had come to the proverbial fork in the road. The path I chose was up to me. I couldn't get better for him or for Kurt, for my mom, or my friends. I had to do it for myself. I had to take a chance on breaking my life-threatening food rules, to be brave enough to believe in myself. And if I couldn'tâ¦there wasn't much that he or anyone else could do for me. I knew he was right. I had to stop punishing myself for what had happened with my father.
That night I returned to the house and lay on the floral bedspread in the guest room, thinking about what Dr. Shaffer had said. In Kurt, I
had been given a huge gift: someone who loved me despite the dirty secrets of my past. Now, here I was, squandering that gift, taking Kurt's love for granted. I thought about how I had told my secrets, and how both Kurt and Dr. Shaffer had supported me. Then I began to wonder:
What would it feel like not to be dizzy all the time? Or sick? It has to be better than this!
I got up from the bed and headed to the kitchen. I felt as though I were moving in slow motion, watching myself, just as I had that evening at Celia's, when I threw up in her bathroom. When I finally got there, I reached into the cupboard and pulled out a bowl. Then I opened the freezer door and took out the cookie dough ice cream. I put two scoops in the bowl, and sat down at the kitchen table. But I was too nervous to eat. I knew I needed to talk to the one person in my life who would understand what it meant for me to eat a bowl of ice cream. I called Kurt.
I told him what Dr. Shaffer had said, how I felt it was time to break my rules, and that I needed him to talk to me while I ate.
“What do you want me to talk about, Jess?”
“Anythingâ¦what you did today, how work was, anything to take my mind off what I'm about to do.”
“There's nothing wrong with eating some ice cream,” he reassured me. “Nothing is going to happen to you if you do. It's just a first little step, a little step that might be the beginning of you getting better.”
“I know, but I'm scared.”
“Just eat,” he said, “and let me talk.”
And so Kurt chatted on about this and that, told me a funny story, then an ironic anecdote. I laughed a little, ate deliberately, and felt that each spoonful that went into my mouth was part of a long journey toward the bottom of the bowl. I wished I could just be a normal woman and enjoy my dessert.
Finally, I finished.
“How do you feel?” Kurt asked.
I thought for a moment. “Okay,” I told him. “I actually feel okay.”
“I'm very proud of you, Jessica. I know how hard that was.”
Kurt said good night, and he told me that he loved me. And I went to bed feeling hopeful. I vowed that in the morning, I would not skip breakfast to make up for being “bad.” That I would finally add the PowerBar Dr. Shaffer had been urging me to eat. That I would take baby step after baby step. That I would recover. In the morning, I kept my promise, and in the weeks that followed, I started to gain weight.
The bulimia hadn't returned, and I began to see my body differently. Now, I
wanted
some flesh. I
wanted
to take up space. The scale still scared me, but I felt as though I had turned a critical cornerâthat, maybe, I had begun to free myself.
My neuroses resurfaced whenever I'd hear Dad's voice or see his face, but I tried my best to set them aside. We even traveled to France to visit his new family. Kurt lurked in the bushes whenever Dad took our girls out to play. I hated myself for seeing him, for pretending to be okay when I wasn't. But what choice did I have?
Then,
Father Joe,
a book that I couldn't help but see as an attempt to bury our secret once and for all. If I didn't speak now, if I didn't correct my father's “record” of our family history, then I would never be able to live with myself. He had chosen to let the world believe he had bared his soul to save it. He even had the gall to dedicate the book to his first family. I simply couldn't let it stand. Here I was, telling the
New York Times
details of something I never wanted to make public. But Daddy only had himself to blameâfor what he had done and for what he had written.
It was the end of the week, and Rudy told Shipley that I was com
ing to New York on Monday. Shipley would call me Tuesday, he told Rudy, after he met with the other editors and figured out the best person to cover the story. That Sunday, a girlfriend in New York called asking me if I had seen the
Times
.
“I live in Los Angeles, now, remember!” I told her. I was a little tense. So she e-mailed me the letter. It was written by Michael McKean, perhaps best known for cowriting the movie
This Is Spinal Tap
.
To the Editor,
In his review of Tony Hendra's
Father Joe
(May 30), Andrew Sullivan refers to the author as “an architect of the peerless parody rock documentary
This Is Spinal Tap
. I wonder where Sullivan picked up that phrase.
McKean wrote that my father “stands apart” as the only actor to have tried to claim credit for the movie, even though he had neither written it nor conceived of it. McKean ended his letter this way: “I think Tony Hendra is at least one confession away from salvation.”
I could feel the frustration and anger in each word that McKean had written. Even today, having authored “one of the best spiritual memoirs ever,” my father was still trying to pull a fast one. And one that Michael, Chris, and the other writers of
This Is Spinal Tap
had called him out on before. They must have been shaking their heads, just as I was, thinking
Tony hasn't changed. He might have
said
on the cover of his book that his soul is saved, but the guy hasn't changed one bit.
I think Tony Hendra is at least one confession away from salvation. Yes
, I thought.
At least one
.
My mom, the girls, and I flew to New York on Monday. Kurt stayed behind to work. Mom had sold the loft and moved to California
shortly before my youngest daughter had been born. She wanted to be close to her grandchildren. Her new husband, my stepfather, watched their house in Topangaâand their gigantic dog-child, Dave.
I went through my usual anxiety about getting on the plane. But I had important reasons to get to New York. First, to take Julia and Charlotte to the American Girl Store on Fifth Avenue, and second, to tell my story to the
New York Times
.
My mother kept a studio apartment on East Thirty-fifth Street, and we arrived there late. The girls were thrilled to be back in the city. All of us crowded into the studio, Charlotte and I sleeping on an air mattress on the floor, my mom and Julia in the bed.
I didn't hear from David Shipley on Tuesday, and I began to wonder if perhaps they had second thoughts about pursuing the story. The notion left me disappointedâand relieved. When I checked my voicemail on Wednesday, I had three messages. Two were from my father, asking me again if we could meet privately and talk. The third was from Shipley. He wanted me to call.
When Shipley and I finally connected, I was on my way up Thirty-fourth Street with my mom and the girls, looking for a bagel place. I stopped on a “quiet” corner and, pressing my cell phone to my ear, strained to hear him. He told me how much my piece had affected him and how he thought it was important to handle it correctly. He wanted my permission to pass it on to the Metro editor, and if I agreed, they would assign someone to the story the next day. I didn't think twice and gave my permission. Shipley said someone would be in touch with me soon. I told my mother the gist of the conversation. She felt as I didâgratified and scared shitless.
On Thursday morning, I heard from John Kifner, the reporter who had been assigned the story. My mother remembered him as an
old friend of my stepfather's (my stepfather had been a well-respected photographer and had worked with a lot of reporters). She wondered if we should remind Kifner of this or whether he might remember himself. I suspect he remembered because, a few hours later, he called me again and cited “a family emergency” that would prevent him from being able to follow the story. He said someone else would be calling me within a few hours.