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 had—quietly, 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 Dad—this 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 parts—one 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 all—for 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’t . . . 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?”
“Anything . . . 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 corner—that, 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 blame—for what he had done and for what he had written.
It was the end of the week, and Rudy told Shipley that I was coming 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 Topanga—and 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 disappointed—and 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 did—gratified 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.
We had planned to take the girls to the Metropolitan Museum of Art that afternoon. I thought it was unfair for them to sit at home waiting for a phone call. So we made our way to the number 6 train and headed to Eighty-sixth Street. Just as we crossed Fifth Avenue and walked toward the main entrance of the museum, my cell phone rang. The number came up as 1111111111. Could it be my father?
“Hello?” I answered reluctantly. The voice on the other end said his name was Sonny Kleinfield and that he was from the Times. He sounded so unassuming that I feared I’d been passed on to someone junior. I had no idea that he was one of the Times’ best, most experienced investigative reporters, and that he would turn out to be, as one of his colleagues later noted, “the instrument of providence.”
“When could we talk, Jessica? I can meet you somewhere, or you can come here. What ever you prefer.”
“What about tomorrow morning? That would be the best time for me.”
“I was hoping we could meet today.”
“It’s just that I am on my way to the museum with my daughters. . . .”
I saw my mother making gestures at me.
“I’m sorry. Can you hold on one second?”
“Sure,” Sonny said.
I put my hand over the phone and turned toward my mother. “What?”
“Jessica, I’ll take the girls to the Met. Go and meet this guy if he wants to meet now. You need to get this over with.”
“But look what I’m wearing!” I had on shorts and a tank top.
“Just say you will meet him. No one in New York dresses in the summer.”
“But I don’t have my notes or anything.” I had been trying to anticipate the interview by writing down some thoughts.
“You don’t need notes.”
“But I’m not prepared!”
“Jessica. . . .” My mother looked straight into my eyes. “You have been preparing for this your whole life. Just tell the guy the truth.”
I took my hand off the phone.
“I’m so sorry to have kept you waiting. I can come now. My mother is going to take my girls.”
“Okay. Where would you like to meet?”
For a second I had an image from some 1940s movie. “Thank you for meeting me, Mr. Kleinfield,” I would say in a deep, raspy voice. The reality was I had no idea where to meet. At that moment I felt incapable of remembering a single diner or coffee shop in the entire city.
“I’ll come to the Times building. It’s easier.”
“Great. Call from downstairs when you get here. I’ll come and get you.”
We hung up, and I turned to my mom. “I’m going to meet him at his office.”
“Good,” she said.
“I just worry that I look like a complete flake coming to the New York Times building in shorts!” I looked myself over. “And a tank top! Mom, what if he thinks I’m not credible?”
My mother took off the Ann Taylor cardigan she had slung over her shoulder, drew my arms into it, and buttoned the sweater over my tank top. It was like she was dressing me for the first day of school.
“Here. Now go.”
I was nervous as I kissed her and the girls good-bye and took the steps into the subway.
As I emerged twenty minutes later on Forty-second Street, I imagined meeting my father coming out of the news buildings around Times Square, having just given an interview about Father Joe. Or perhaps he would be coming from a leisurely lunch with his agent during which they discussed the size of the checks they would both be receiving if Father Joe stayed on the bestseller lists. I felt like a traitor to him.
I walked in the lobby of the Times building, and the security guard, large and gruff with a big mustache, greeted me. I called up to Sonny in the newsroom. He said he’d be right down to get me.
I paced in the lobby and tugged at the legs of my shorts, trying to make them seem longer. I wished I was wearing a nice pants suit (I didn’t even own one, but never mind). Finally, a fair, slight man came out of the elevator wearing jeans and discreetly holding a note pad and pen.
“I’m Sonny Kleinfield,” he said, extending his hand.
“I’m Jessica Hendra,” I said, shaking it.
“Do you want to go and talk in the cafeteria here or out somewhere?”
“I don’t know,” I said somewhat sheepishly. I mean, what was the best spot for denouncing your father?
“Let’s just go to the cafeteria.”
“Fine.”
Sonny signed me in, and I followed him to the elevators.
“I’m sorry I’m so casually dressed. I was expecting to be taking two small children around the hot city today.” I sounded a bit shaky.
“Don’t worry about that,” he said. “No one in New York dresses in the summer.” Mom was right.
Sonny and I took the elevator to the cafeteria and chitchatted about the security in the building since September 11. When we got there, I excused myself and went into the ladies room to splash some cold water on my face and pull myself together. Sonny waited patiently, and when we walked into the cafeteria together, we stopped for coffee.
Do I pay or does he pay? I felt I should offer, but strangely, I didn’t want him to think I was buying him off. Sonny paid. Then he asked me where I wanted to sit. I chose a table at the very back of the cafeteria. Even though I was about to tell more than a million readers of the New York Times what my father had done, on that day I didn’t want anyone but Sonny to hear my story. It was as though I had blocked out the reality of what I was doing and still treasured the illusion of privacy. I took one sip of the coffee, gagged slightly, and left the rest to get cold on the table.
I wish I could remember all the questions Sonny asked me or even how he began his interview. I only recall how nervous I felt and how skillfully Sonny drew the story out of me. He didn’t push me into saying anything, and he was considerate of the difficult details of my past. I don’t even remember when I realized he was taking furious notes. I just remember telling him my story, as clearly as I could. And objectively, even. Despite all that had happened, I felt I needed to be fair-minded. The truth, after all, was on my side.
“I have the piece you sent to the Op-Ed page,” he told me. “You talk about what happened with your dad in great detail in it. I’m not going to ask you to recount all that again right now. But is it okay for me to just quote from what you have already written?”
“Yes. That would be much easier for me.” I felt relieved. “Thank you.”
We talked for more than three hours, and Sonny sympathetically scrutinized everything I said. It seemed as though he believed me but needed to be sure. And who could blame him for being skeptical? I had come to the paper on my own volition. I had initiated this. And I was increasingly aware that I was taking a huge risk. Sonny might believe me. Or he might not.
He asked if he could talk to Kurt, my friends, and two therapists—Dr. Shaffer and the woman I was currently seeing in Los Angeles, Dr. Tracy Studdard. And also to my mother. I promised to call him with a list of numbers from my phone book after I got back to Mom’s apartment. I also said I’d ask my mother if she would consent to an interview. But I cautioned him that Kathy “wasn’t going to want to get involved.”
Sonny also wanted to see the e-mails my father and I had exchanged after Father Joe came out. And as I had over and over again since that day, he bemoaned the fact that I had destroyed the letters my father had sent me ten years ago, when I was in therapy for my anorexia.
“Does your dad know you’re talking to me?” I knew Sonny would ask. I felt awkward about my dad not knowing and answered, simply, “No.”
“You know that I will have to contact your father later in the process.” Sonny seemed so matter-of-fact about it, so clinical.
“Of course you will,” I said. “You should. You have to.” I’m sure he didn’t need to be reminded. “I understand that.”
“What do you think he will say?”
I had asked myself that very question since I thought about doing this. “I don’t know,” and I didn’t. “I can’t imagine he could deny it. . . .” Not exactly true; I could imagine it. Vividly. “But I guess he will.”
“Yes,” Sonny answered, “I guess he will.”
We exchanged e-mails and phone numbers and agreed to talk soon.
I walked from the Times building and onto Forty-third Street. The late afternoon sun still blazed but with a tad less intensity. I even felt a very slight breeze. I called my mother on my cell phone. She had arranged for us to have dinner at a friend’s apartment that evening. I didn’t ask what excuse she had given our hostess for me being so late.
“How was it?” she asked quietly.
“It was fine. Hard. Very hard. But fine.”
I told her I’d make my way to the Upper East Side to meet her. “It may take me awhile. I really need a walk.”
I ducked into a Starbucks for a decent cup of coffee and spotted a stack of the New York Times at the counter. In a few days, my story might be sitting there, for sale in this very Starbucks. I wasn’t sure what to think about that. It just felt . . . strange.
I walked to East Eighty-second Street—wandered, really, past buildings and stores that seemed familiar. I guess this made sense, I thought. To come back to New York to tell my story.
My mother buzzed me into her friend’s apartment building, and when I came out of the elevator, we had a muffled conference about how we “would talk about it later.” I stepped into the living room where the girls were playing Sorry! with the daughter of our hostess, and I worked hard to set aside the day’s events, even for a while.
That night, I told Mom about my talk with Sonny. She seemed proud of what I’d done, and she said she would be willing to go to the Times the next day. I checked my messages. My father had called twice. I spent the night tossing on the air mattress.
Sonny and I talked in the morning, and I asked him if I could call my friends and doctors before I gave him their numbers. I wanted to let them know why they might be receiving phone calls from the Times. That’s fine, he said, but he wanted the go-ahead to start calling people as soon as possible.
That afternoon, my mom went to Forty-third Street while I roamed around Manhattan with Julia and Charlotte. She returned late in the afternoon, after she and Sonny had spent almost two hours discussing what I had told him. My mom corroborated dates and places. She gave details about her life with my father and what my childhood had been like. And she said she made at least one thing very clear to Sonny: She believed me.
I left messages for everyone on my list, none of whom I managed to reach on the first try. The day was as sweltering as the day before, so I took Julia and Charlotte to the park on East Thirty-fourth and Second Avenue to cool off. I knew there were sprinklers there, and the girls loved to run through them. My phone rang just as I was trying to find Charlotte’s sandals to walk back to the apartment. Before answering, I made sure it wasn’t my father.
Dr. Shaffer was returning my call. In a muddled narrative, hindered by the fact that I had to crawl under a bench to retrieve the lost sandals, I explained what was going on. I was in New York, I told him. I had gone to the press. And the Times was working on the story. “I was wondering,” I asked. . . . “Could I give the reporter your number? I know it’s a lot to ask, but it would be so helpful if you could talk to him.”
“Jessica, the hospital has very strict rules about this sort of thing,” he told me. “There is a whole public relations process that has to be gone through for me to allow them to publish my name and the name of the hospital.”
Dammit! Now Sonny will never believe me. I would have to call him and tell him that my psychiatrist couldn’t talk to him. My voice was full of disappointment.
“I understand,” I said, and part of me did. “But if you don’t talk to him it makes me seem . . . not credible.” I must’ve sounded pathetic. I was pleading. I knew that. “That’s the thing. I want him to know that I’m not making this up.”
Shaffer paused. “Jessica, listen. I know you are credible. But I can only talk to this reporter anonymously. I cannot give permission for him to publish my name or use the hospital’s name in the story. But if it helps you, I will talk to him.”
Then: “You can give him my number.”
I thanked him profusely, and about ten minutes later, repeated the conversation with my other therapist, Dr. Studdard. Like Dr. Shaffer, she would agree to talk to Sonny, but only if her name wasn’t published.
That night, I reached two very old friends. The first was Gage, who was at home in Philadelphia. Gage once had a theater company in Philadelphia and had directed me in at least six or seven shows. We hadn’t worked together since we started having babies. But we were still close, and I had told her years ago something about what had happened with my dad.
“Jessica, I have been thinking about you!” she said the moment she heard my voice. “The other day I was listening to Fresh Air on NPR, and I heard the most nauseating interview with your father.”
“Yeah, I heard about that,” I groaned, remembering that day at Charlotte’s preschool.
“I was storming around the house at every word out of that man’s mouth. And Terri Gross was practically crawling into his lap. ‘Oh Tony,’ she kept saying.” Gage spoke in falsetto, and I couldn’t help but laugh. “It was revolting. How could he dare to write a book like that! You must be going insane.”
And then I grew serious. “Actually, Gage, that’s why I’m calling. . . .”
“Of course you can give him my number,” she told me after hearing what I had done. “Your dad should not be able to get away with this.”
Then I called Alison, my closest friend in Los Angeles. She and I had known each other in New York long before we both ended up moving to L.A. I had told her about my father when we were in our twenties.
She and I had been talking almost daily since the book came out. She knew I had contacted the Times. Now I asked if they could call her. Like Gage, she was supportive. “Absolutely, Jess. Absolutely he can call me.”
The only friend left to call was my soul mate, the girl who had been with me during some of the worst of times: Krisztina. But it was four in the morning in the French village where she lived with her husband and children. That call was going to have to wait until the next day. I got up early to catch her at home. She was just sitting down to lunch.
“Krisztina, I need to talk to you about something serious. I want you of all people to understand what’s going on here and how I feel.” I explained about Father Joe, which had yet made its way to rural France. Her reaction told me so much about how nothing between us had changed.
“How did your dad have the guts to write a book like that?” she asked incredulously. “Doesn’t he have any conscience?”
“I guess not,” I answered. A part of me still wants to defend him! I thought.
I told her about the New York Times.
“I’ll talk to whoever you want me to,” she said. As always, she had come through for me.
Later that morning, I called Sonny to give him the go-ahead to call whomever he wanted. Then I took the girls to Chinatown. Again, my father called. Again, I did not answer.
The weekend proved quiet—no calls from my father or from Sonny. Then on Monday, Sonny and I must have been on the phone at least four or five times.
I knew he was hoping to get the story out by the middle of that week. And my father’s messages were piling up in my voicemail. It was time. I had to return his call. He would have one last chance—one final opportunity to come clean himself before I went any further with the Times.
I called him at home, but he wasn’t able to talk. So we arranged that I would call him that night, on his cell, at 10:00 P.M. sharp.
A few minutes early, I headed into the tiny bathroom of my mother’s studio apartment, locked the door, and crouched on the floor. I’m thirty-nine and still scared of him, I thought. I felt as if I might vomit.
But this . . . this would be his chance—his last chance, I promised myself—to do what he hadn’t done for thirty-two years, to finally take responsibility for what he’d done to me. I would call him and tell him that I had gone to the press, that a reporter was working on a story. I would tell him that I couldn’t keep the secret any longer. And he would say, “Jessie, treasure, I’m so sorry.” He’d tell me that it wasn’t my fault. He would promise he’d get help. He’d tell me to do what ever I needed to do, that he understood.
And I felt sick because I knew it would never happen that way.
Outside the bathroom door, my mother played Go Fish with Charlotte and Julia. She knew what I was about to do, and I could tell she was concerned; her face said so.
I punched in the number he had given me, written down on an old grocery receipt. “Dad cell,” it said. The phone rang twice. Then, my father: “Hello.”
“It’s me, Dad.” Three words and I felt exhausted.
“Hi Jessie.” I could see his face—those huge blue eyes, the puffy cheeks, the thin blond hair combed back behind his ears. He might have been sixty-two, but the features never aged. I could see his hands, those sinewy hands, and smell the thin cigars he smoked since before I was born. I stood for a moment with the phone to my ear and looked in the mirror over the sink. They were his eyes that stared back at me, his hair that fell on my shoulders.
I can’t do it, I thought. I sat quickly on the floor, pulled the phone from my ear and put my hand over the mouthpiece. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.
He had wanted to see me, but I needed the distance, the insulation. I heard him tell someone that he had to “take this call in private.” Then the background sounds faded, and my father said my name again. Not the name I had now. Not my grown-up name. Not Jessica, but Jessie.
“Hi Dad,” I said flatly.
He thanked me for calling and told me he was devastated that I was upset by Father Joe. “I wrote it to make amends, Jessie.”
“Dad, how can covering up what you did to me make amends?”
“Jessie, it’s not a comprehensive confessional.” Not a “comprehensive confessional” was such a Tony Hendra-ism.
He asked me what I wanted him to do.
“I want you to go to all the people who have bought, read, and believed in your book and tell them what you left out, Dad. That’s what I want.” My heart banged on my chest. I was telling him. I was saying what I needed to say.
“That’s impossible, Jessie,” he said. But what about this? he wondered. Perhaps the two of us could write a book together?
“I don’t want to write a book with you, Dad. I want you to tell the truth, now! And if you don’t, Daddy . . .” My heart banged harder. “If you don’t, then I will.”
“Is that a threat, Jessie?”
“No, Dad, it’s not a threat.” I felt so tired, so worn down. “It’s just how I feel. It’s just . . . how I feel.”
“But this is something between us,” he said forcefully. “I am not going to tell the media about this.”
I paused a moment, closed my eyes and realized that once I told him, my relationship with my father—the one that I had struggled with and agonized over for the last thirty-two years—likely would end. It came out almost casually. “Well, Dad, I went to the New York Times and told them everything.”
Silence. And then, in the highest register of his usually mellow voice: “Jesus Christ, Jessie! Oh Jessie, what did you go and do that for!” It was the first and last time I have felt sorry for my father since the day when I first read the Times review of Father Joe. But I couldn’t let my guard down. Not this time. I knew what was coming, and I was right: the counterattack.
“You’ve ruined Carla’s career, Jessie. You’ve brought nothing but pain, misery, and suffering on to the lives of countless people by doing this, Jessie.”
Neither statement made any sense to me. Carla? Why should what my father did long before he met his new wife reflect at all on her? And how could something that he always told me was not that big a deal suddenly, because other people knew about it, become so devastating? Why was it never devastating when it was just me who had to suffer it? But I said nothing and just sat in that small bathroom with my heart drumming against my chest, my head leaning on the sink, my eyes closed.
“The media is not objective,” he said, which made about as much sense to me as the comment about ruining his wife’s career. And then his voice softened. “Did someone put you up to this, Jess?” A way out! I thought. He’s giving me a way out!
I had tried his ways before. They left me hating myself, bulimic, anorexic, and wishing I were dead. It took me three decades to learn there was only one way out: to simply tell the truth. To tell everything. To make the secret go away. How could he not know that? Wasn’t that the point of his bestselling book? Confess and forgiveness and salvation can be yours? “No, Dad,” I said. “I did this by myself.”
Another pause.
“We will never speak to each other again on this earth,” he said, and with that, he hung up on me for the last time.
Into the line that seemed as dead as my relationship with my father, I said only one word, softly: “Okay.” And I was sure, perhaps for the first time since I was seven, that it would be.
I listened to the silence on the other end for a second. Then I opened my eyes, looked at my cell phone and saw the word “END.” I pressed the button, turned off the phone, and hid it beneath a towel on the floor. Then I lay down as well as I could in the tiny space and waited to cry.
Suddenly, I felt the hardness of the floor, my body lying there, hands cushioning my head. I remembered the worst stage of my anorexia, how I wanted to be so small that no one would even realize I was there. How I wanted to vanish. How I hated myself.
The tears never came, but I guess I wasn’t surprised. What had just happened was inevitable. For thirty-two years, I had tried to have a relationship with my father, and pretending I could almost killed me.
There would be no more lies. No more secrets. I owed my father nothing.
I knew too much—I’d gone through too much—to be a little girl anymore, silent, timid, and afraid of Daddy. Now, at thirty-nine, it was time to grow up.
The next morning I told my mom that I didn’t think Dad was going to take responsibility for what he had done, that I was sure that when he got the call from Sonny, he’d find a way to creatively—and convincingly—deny everything. Mom said nothing at first. Then she stood and walked over to where I sat. Her face looked tight.
“Jessica, I should have told you this years ago, and I am deeply ashamed that I didn’t.” I looked up at her. “Tony confessed to me. Not about when you were seven but about the time when you were older. When he touched you in the bathroom.”
I stared at her, stunned. She came closer and whispered so that the girls wouldn’t hear.
“He told me he was in the bathroom with you and that he made you masturbate him. He said he was ‘a monster.’ And then he cried. I didn’t know what to do. I thought maybe he was making it up, or that he was drunk or stoned, and that he was being dramatic. I’m so sorry.”
She sounded almost desperate, as though she had also been keeping a secret for him for decades. I couldn’t believe what she was saying.
“This has been on my conscience for years,” she said a bit louder now. “I should have told you when I came with you to talk to Dr. Shaffer ten years ago. But I was ashamed. I was just too ashamed to tell him that I knew and didn’t do anything. And I lied to Sonny too. He asked me if I knew, and I didn’t tell him the truth.”
I put my hands over my face and closed my eyes. Dad confessed to her? Not all of it, no. But some of it anyway. He confessed it. I was too shocked by my mother’s revelation to be angry at her for never having told me. And I understood why she hadn’t. I knew about keeping secrets, about being afraid to tell. I imagined the night he told her, that he almost certainly was drunk or high. I imagined him collapsing on their bed in the front room, crying, beating his breast. She must have been terrified. Maybe she considered going to the police that night, but I doubt it. And when he woke up the next morning, hung over and silent, she reasoned that if she said anything he would only deny it. And so, as I had tried to do for so many years, she simply let it go. I knew that she had tried to make it up to me, that she was trying to make amends now by finally telling the truth. Perhaps that meant more to me than it should have. It was something my father never had done.
“Ma, you have to tell Sonny,” I implored. “I’m not angry. But you have to tell Sonny.”
“I know.”
She picked up the phone, and I recited the number as she dialed. I heard her tell Sonny that she needed to talk to him about “something very important.” Then she tried to hide from her granddaughters—not in the bathroom, as I had done the night before, but near the front door of the apartment. I distracted Julia and Charlotte as best I could while she talked. All I heard were her opening words—the same ones she had just said to me: “I am desperately ashamed of this.”
When she finished, I asked her about Sonny’s reaction.
“He asked me why I hadn’t said something before now.” She looked relieved, almost freed. “I felt as if he were the voice of God.”
I kissed her. “Thank you, Ma.” And I wondered what Sonny was thinking at his desk in the Times building. Did he feel as though he had unwittingly become a member of the chorus in a Greek tragedy? I could see him watching all the Hendra secrets come to light in front of him, shaking his head, and saying “What a family. What a family.”