Read Online How to Cook Your Daughter by Jessica Hendra - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Jessica Hendra
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indifferent tone: âNow in the hip-happening, going-too-far, nothing-is-sacred, dish-it-out world of the 1972 Lampoon, this sort of thing had happened onceor twice beforeâ¦. The line between loyalties and love were very indistinct, and claims on people made no sense.â
Maybe for him, but not for OâDonoghue, who demanded a complete, unequivocal apology from his former friend. âHe seemed to be trying to will me to admit a wrong, a terrible wrong, an immeasurably terrible wrong and then die,â my father wrote later.
Michael should have known what I have come to accept: Admitting terrible wrongs is far beyond my father.
The situation escalated, the Lampoon offices divided, the adversaries avoided each other until, finally, a confrontation. According to my dad, Michaelâs last words to him were: âYouâre slime, Hendra. I hate you! Youâre scum, you hear? Nothing but scum, slime!â My mother, however, was never one for showdowns. The affair, and in fact all the affairs, must have hurt her deeply. But she dealt with my fatherâs behavior by avoiding it. She didnât want to know. She didnât want to see. She didnât want to hear. While the Lampoon offices were filled with high emotion, Mom stayed silent and absorbed the blows, as if she were on the sealâs end of that Lampoon photo shoot. My not wanting to go to school occupied the tiniest corner of her mind. So I remained inside my dollhouse and missed the last month and a half of first grade.
Kathy found my âillnessâ irritating. âYouâre always getting to stay home, and I have to go to stupid school!â she yelled at me one evening as we fought over who got to sit closest to the tiny black-and-white television that my parents, with reservations, had finally purchased. They were, I suppose, ambivalent about television. My mother wasnât interested in it, and my father regarded it as emblematic of the stupidity of American culture (perhaps because he had had no success writing for it). Once we had one, however, he got sucked in too. An insomniac,he often spent long nights glued to the tube. As a family, we watched Monty Pythonâs Flying Circus . Mom and Daddy had gone to Cambridge with almost the entire cast, and my father naturally had a professional interest in what was probably the most innovative comedy on television. Still, he couldnât help but warn us of the terrible âbrain rotâ we would get from watching too much. And like many things my father said, suddenly this thing, this âbrain rot,â concerned me. After an hour of Saturday morning cartoons, I worried I had caught it. When my mother read Kathy and me Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, I was astounded to hear a whole song devoted to the ills of watching television.
I asked Mom if Daddy had written the book. âNo,â she answered, âbut I wish he had.â
Jockeying for the best spot on the bed to watch TV was just one of the squabbles Kathy and I had that spring. My special stay-at-home privileges did nothing to improve the already competitive relationship I had with my sister. We were so close in age that some fighting was inevitable. But it became more than just the normal sisterly button pushing. When we fought, I sensed that Kathy truly disliked me. She did all the things that siblings might do, twisting my wrist to give me an âIndian burnâ or digging her nails into my arm until little reds marks appeared. But she did it with a gusto that made me think her anger was deeper than any mark she left. Kathy saw me as prettier, even though I always felt too awkward to be pretty, with my floating eye and pigeon toes. But to Kathy, thin defined pretty, and thin I was. She, however, was chubby, and my father made sure she knew it. When he wasnât calling her âThunder Thighs,â he made jokes about her âextra tires,â grinding her self-esteem to dust. Weight had
Maybe for him, but not for OâDonoghue, who demanded a complete, unequivocal apology from his former friend. âHe seemed to be trying to will me to admit a wrong, a terrible wrong, an immeasurably terrible wrong and then die,â my father wrote later.
Michael should have known what I have come to accept: Admitting terrible wrongs is far beyond my father.
The situation escalated, the Lampoon offices divided, the adversaries avoided each other until, finally, a confrontation. According to my dad, Michaelâs last words to him were: âYouâre slime, Hendra. I hate you! Youâre scum, you hear? Nothing but scum, slime!â My mother, however, was never one for showdowns. The affair, and in fact all the affairs, must have hurt her deeply. But she dealt with my fatherâs behavior by avoiding it. She didnât want to know. She didnât want to see. She didnât want to hear. While the Lampoon offices were filled with high emotion, Mom stayed silent and absorbed the blows, as if she were on the sealâs end of that Lampoon photo shoot. My not wanting to go to school occupied the tiniest corner of her mind. So I remained inside my dollhouse and missed the last month and a half of first grade.
Kathy found my âillnessâ irritating. âYouâre always getting to stay home, and I have to go to stupid school!â she yelled at me one evening as we fought over who got to sit closest to the tiny black-and-white television that my parents, with reservations, had finally purchased. They were, I suppose, ambivalent about television. My mother wasnât interested in it, and my father regarded it as emblematic of the stupidity of American culture (perhaps because he had had no success writing for it). Once we had one, however, he got sucked in too. An insomniac,he often spent long nights glued to the tube. As a family, we watched Monty Pythonâs Flying Circus . Mom and Daddy had gone to Cambridge with almost the entire cast, and my father naturally had a professional interest in what was probably the most innovative comedy on television. Still, he couldnât help but warn us of the terrible âbrain rotâ we would get from watching too much. And like many things my father said, suddenly this thing, this âbrain rot,â concerned me. After an hour of Saturday morning cartoons, I worried I had caught it. When my mother read Kathy and me Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, I was astounded to hear a whole song devoted to the ills of watching television.
I asked Mom if Daddy had written the book. âNo,â she answered, âbut I wish he had.â
Jockeying for the best spot on the bed to watch TV was just one of the squabbles Kathy and I had that spring. My special stay-at-home privileges did nothing to improve the already competitive relationship I had with my sister. We were so close in age that some fighting was inevitable. But it became more than just the normal sisterly button pushing. When we fought, I sensed that Kathy truly disliked me. She did all the things that siblings might do, twisting my wrist to give me an âIndian burnâ or digging her nails into my arm until little reds marks appeared. But she did it with a gusto that made me think her anger was deeper than any mark she left. Kathy saw me as prettier, even though I always felt too awkward to be pretty, with my floating eye and pigeon toes. But to Kathy, thin defined pretty, and thin I was. She, however, was chubby, and my father made sure she knew it. When he wasnât calling her âThunder Thighs,â he made jokes about her âextra tires,â grinding her self-esteem to dust. Weight had
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