Hendra - How to Cook Your Daughter

FOR MY DAUGHTERS,

JULIA AND CHARLOTTE,

WHO CHANGED EVERYTHING.

Contents

I PULLED THE BOOK FROM THE SHELF AT BORDERS and read the names first. The title: Father Joe: The Man Who Saved My Soul. Then the author: Tony Hendra, my father.

Thats when I noticed the hands.

There is no face on the jacket of my dads memoir. Just a cassocked body of a monk, shot from the shoulders down, hands folded across what looks like a Bible. They are strong, sinewy hands, and they may belong to a priest or perhaps just a model posing for the cover. Still, I couldnt help but see something different.

They reminded me of hands that had once held a child. That had pushed back her white-blond hair and carried her off to bed. That had felt beneath her nightie. That had explored a little girl.

They reminded me of my fathers hands.

Of course they couldnt be his, I thought. He wouldnt have volunteered to dress up for the cover just to save the modeling fee, would he?

Donning religious garb had been something of an obsession with my father. It had been his way of sticking it to the Catholic Church, an institution that he simultaneously revered and resented, and I could remember at least three or four pictures of him playing a priest or a cardinal, or even the Pope.

But this book wasnt billed as a parody. In fact, it had just been described by the nations most influential newspaper as one of the greatest spiritual memoirs ever written.

A day earlier, I had come home to a phone call after a long and sweaty run, the sort I take every morning, no matter the weather or occasion. I ran on my wedding day and the morning after, never mind that it was below freezing and snowing. Running was my obsession, and my husband, Kurt, a character actor whose face youd know quicker than his name, had grown used to my many foibles. He even helped me laugh at them. He understood that I couldnt cook more than maybe four dishes, and that, if we ever had dinner parties, Id just buy something from the store and guiltily accept what ever compliments came my way. He knew that I never bought a hair dryer because, for some reason, I could never quite figure out how to use it effectively. He accepted that, at thirty-nine, I still struggled knowing my right hand from my left, and that my dyslexia made it difficult for me to read even my own handwriting. He even figured out my secret: I tried to compensate by making my writing illegible (if I couldnt read it, no one would!). And Kurt loved me anyway.

On the phone was Rudy Maxa, a former newspaper reporter and columnist better known to National Public Radio listeners as The Savvy Traveler. He had been the best man at our wedding and is a dear family friend. Listen, have you seen the New York Times Book Review this morning? he asked.

No Rudy. I smiled. I live in Los Angeles now, remember?

Rudy didnt laugh. Well I think you should take a look at it. Theres a lead review of your dads new book. And its a rave. I mean a rave. You may find it surprising.

I wiped my forehead. Surprising in what way, Rudy? I felt as though he was trying to tell me something without really wanting to say it.

I know you said your dad was writing a book about a priest, he said, but this book... well, it sounds like a confessional.

A what?

A confessional. The review says, quote, It belongs in the first tier of spiritual memoirs ever written.

The first tier of spiritual memoirs? What else does it say? My voice had grown weak. I was reluctant to ask but too curious not to. When my father had first mentioned the book to me in passing two years earlier, he had called it a biography of sorts. I shouldve known to attach more meaning to the last two wordsof sortsrather than the first two. Of sorts was the sort of caveat my father loved to offer.

Just go online and read the review yourself, Rudy said. You might have something to say about the book. If you do let me know. I can get you to the right people.

The offer seemed odd, but I suspected Rudy knew more than he wanted to share. It was no secret to him that my dad and I had a difficult relationship. I wasnt sure exactly what my husband had told him, but he had told him something, if not the whole story. Rudy had been in the newspaper and magazine business for years, and at one timecoincidentlyhe was the Washington writer for Spy when my father was its editor-in-chief. If he said I should read the review, then I would.

Kurt downloaded and printed it for me. You read it, he said. Ill go amuse the girls. Our daughters, Julia and Charlotte, were six and three years old.

And so I closed the door and sat down in our playroom/office to read a review that began this way: Saints are perhaps always best evoked by sinners. And it would be hard to think of someone more at ease in the world of modern sin than Tony Hendra.

Modern sin? At ease? Did the reviewer really have any idea the nature of my fathers sins?

The book indeed was a biographyof sortsabout a Benedictine monk named Father Joseph Warrilow. For most of his life, my dad had known Father Joe, first meeting him when he was fourteen on a trip to an abbey off the coast of England on the Isle of Wight. Since then, the two had remained friends, and the book told the story of how Father Joe helped my dad, now sixty-two, come to terms with all he had done wrong.

I had met Father Joe twice before he had died a few years ago, and I knew him to be as my fatherand the reviewdescribed him: an incredibly special man. What I didnt recognize were the descriptions of my father, of his life, or of the sins that he had confessed. The reviewer wrote of my fathers sexual adventures and how none of them was truly sinful. How Father Joes great gift was to relieve him of misplaced sexual guilt. And I asked, incredulous, as I read it, How could my father write about this? About sex and sin and misplaced guilt?

Then came the phrase that I could not forget. Tony Hendra, it read, spares us no details of his own iniquities as a parent.... I reread it a few times. Spares us no details of his own iniquities. What does that mean? For a moment, I thought: Hes finally come out with it. But I saw from the rest of the review that, of course, he had not. All I wanted to do was to call this reviewer and shout, How do you know he spared no details! Oh, he spared you a lot of details because if people knew the details, no one would have published this biography of sorts!

I paced in circles holding the review in my hand, ignoring the cries of Mommy, were hungry coming from outside the door. I had locked it so I could cry without scaring the poor girls who were now rattling the door handle. Finally, I pulled myself together enough to go outside. I had been a professional actress for about twenty years, and though never as accomplished as my husband, Id met with some success when I first came to Hollywood. But after I had Julia, I focused more on mothering than acting, and my most unforgettable roleas Dejar in Star Trek: Deep Space Nineis remembered less for my acting and more because of the audience: Trekkies who log every character. Thats not to diminish my convincing portrayal of a Cardassian female... [who] posed as a scientific colleague of Ulani and Gilora and attempted to sabotage a joint Cardassian-Bajoran scientific effort to place a subspace relay in the Gamma Quadrant. At least, thats how StarTrek.com describes it. Now, a much tougher role awaited me. I had to put on a happy face for my daughters. But as I mixed and poured pancakes and talked with them, distracted, I couldnt escape the review, the book, and what, if anything, I should do about it.

Of course, I had to read Father Joe. The book sounded so different than the one Dad had told me about in France two years earlier. But maybe there was something that alluded to bigger iniquities. Or maybe... maybe there was some note that made it clear that the author left some events out of his confession for the sake of those he hurt.