How to Cook Your Daughter by Jessica Hendra Read Free Book Online Page B

traffic. Like the VW van, she had a habit of stalling, and too often we sat frozen when red lights turned green. The honking gave me a headache.
    Still, I was full of excitement when we finally walked out of the elevator and into the recording studio. Assorted members of the Lampoon were waiting for us, including Michael O’Donoghue, then one of my father’s closest friends. The guys showed me around the sound booth, the colossal earphones, the warren of levers and buttons that controlled the volume, the mike that needed to be adjusted to accommodate my four-foot height. When the engineer said they were ready for me, I suddenly got shaky. My father had to feed me my line:
    â€œWhat can you expect from a God who crucified his own son?”
    I practiced it a few times with him, working to say it exactly on his hand signal. On the first take, I got the line wrong. On the second, I said it too fast. Finally, after a few more tries, I nailed it.
    â€œThat was perfect!” Daddy said, taking the headphones off my small, bright-red ears. I was elated. We stepped from the booth, and I held his hand as we stood with Michael, my mother, and Kathy. The engineer played back the cut. I was thrilled to listen to myselfcoming through the speakers, but after he heard it, my father looked down at me.
    â€œDid you know you are going to hell for what you just said, Jessie?”
    My stomach turned. I hadn’t gone to church more than a handful of times, but I had heard all about hell from my dad—the burning bodies, the devil, and the red-hot pokers stuck in your eyes for ever and ever. Jessica Christ had worried me. But now, I had said something bad about God. My worst fears were coming true, and it was my own fault. “But you told me to say that, Daddy!” I blurted. “You told me to say that!”
    â€œIt doesn’t matter,” he said calmly. “You are still going to hell. In fact, Jessie, now we are both going to hell.”
    â€œBut Daddy, what if I say I’m sorry?” I was desperate.
    â€œIt’s too late for that,” he said. “God listens to records.”
    Maybe everyone in the room laughed. All I remember is that no one reassured me that I was not, in fact, destined for eternal damnation. It might not have made much of an impression if they had. I always believed my father.
    I got my $50 and went off to spend it in wonderland—the gigantic FAO Schwartz on Fifth Avenue. But I felt sick as I looked at the doll house furniture, stuffed animals, toy cars, and roller skates. Yes, they could be mine. But all I could think about was what awaited me. Hell.
    God listens to records. And there was nothing I could do about it.
    A few months later, my father lay naked on the ice of the frozen riverbed outside our house, curled in a fetal position. Above him, my mom brandished a blood-specked baseball bat. He was freezing to death. He had to be. After all, it must have been close to zero outside. And he lay there shivering, in a pool of blood—until the Lampoon’s art director told him he could get up. Kathy and I watched from the shore.
    Christmas had passed, and whatever thoughts I had of going to hell had abated, but my fears for my father remained. He still traveled into the city often, and when he might return never seemed certain. And so I was glad when he began bringing his work home with him—no matter how bizarre it turned out to be. At that time, the Lampoon had no budget for its photo spreads. Open the magazine, and you would see the editors modeling T-shirts or a naked Michael O’Donoghue as “Mr. Yum-Yum Cosmo, cutie of the month” in a Cosmopolitan parody. So when my dad decided to parody a burly hunter clubbing a baby seal for the Lampoon ’s “Men” issue, he offered to shoot it in our backyard. Why not stage the shoot on the frozen river? And why not feature my mom as the club-wielding hunter? And have Daddy curl up on the ice