Being Kendra (5 page)

I
T’S
OVER!
SPLIT!
KENDRA
LEAVES
HANK!

Yes, I’ve read all of those headlines too. I try not to pay attention to any of that, but what I will say is that whatever is going on between me and Hank is our business and nobody else’s. Sure, we have had our moments. But doesn’t every couple?

If married life was just sitting on the beach in Hawaii sipping fruity cocktails then there would never be anything to fight about. But that’s not reality! When you’re married you’ve got two lives to plan and coordinate. Throw in a kid and life becomes a little slice of mayhem. We make it work and we love it, but it’s not without its little hiccups.

Being married to a football player isn’t easy. In just two years Hank went from the Philadelphia Eagles (the team he was on when we met and fell in love), to the Indianapolis Colts (we mostly lived in Indianapolis during the pregnancy and birth of baby Hank), back to the Philadelphia Eagles for a few weeks, to the Minnesota Vikings for a few months, to being back home in L.A. unemployed and without a team.

None of that was easy, but our troubles culminated in the summer of 2010 when we had made the decision to pack up our lives temporarily and leave L.A. to move to Philadelphia for Hank. It was his second time playing for the Eagles, and we thought it would be a long-term job for him. We’d film the show there, move into an apartment, meet some families, and live a fun city life. Not forever. But for as long as Hank was with the Eagles, which we thought might be a couple of years. It didn’t work out the way we’d planned, and when Hank got cut in September (just a few months after Hank Jr. and I had relocated to the East Coast), our world was thrown into a tailspin.

When we first arrived in Philly, the show told us we were going to stay in a gorgeous hotel until our apartment was ready. Wow, hotel living—not too shabby! Lobbies, restaurants, bellmen, concierges—the full white-glove treatment! We were like, “Okay. Sign us up!” They said, “The place is beautiful, it’s amazing, with room service, a penthouse, and all that.” But when we got to the hotel and checked into the room I turned to Hank and said, “What the fuck?” We had no kitchen; it was literally a plain old hotel room where I couldn’t cook for my baby. So, in order to eat, we had to order room service and pay for everything. As a mother I felt completely unprepared for this. I was stripped of the tools I needed to properly take care of my family. Dinners shouldn’t be served with packets of ketchup on a roll-away table.

I was the star of a hit show on E!. I had worked my ass off to get where I was in life and Hank was an NFL athlete—so why were we living in a hotel room? We were there for three days before I started to go crazy. Claustrophobic doesn’t even begin to cover it. The three of us—and all of our stuff, including Hank Jr.’s toys and essentials, and my clothes—could hardly fit in the room. There was no space for him to play or to move around. I lost my cool and said to Hank: “Get me the fuck out of here right now or I’m leaving you.” I threatened Hank and gave him an ultimatum. This was a wife speaking to her husband, a mom saying we need a better life for our child. Was it over? No. Was it close? Well, it was pretty bad. But all he had to do was fix it.

What people don’t know is that Hank actually had a house in Philly all picked out for us. The show’s producers wanted us to live in a condo or an apartment (or a hotel apparently) so they could execute their “Kendra comes to the city of Brotherly Love” angle. Fun angle, bad execution. If Hank had only told production that he already had a house, we could have filmed there! He gets shy sometimes and lets others control him and push him around because he’s too nice of a guy, but his being a wimp really put us into this horrible predicament. It jeopardized our happiness and our safety (we had hotel guests pounding on our door at all hours), and I wasn’t going to stand for it. Sometimes you just have to light a fire under your husband’s ass.

I freaked out on him. I made him call everyone involved with the Eagles and E! and basically said, “Fix it!” (File that under things he should have done before his family moved across the country.) It was Hank’s responsibility to put a decent roof over his family’s heads. Sure, we were there for the show, but we could have argued and arranged to live elsewhere or figured out a way to make it work for the show and, most important, us. He moved us to Philly without checking out the living situation. Show me any woman who would put up with that shit. I had no home; the baby had no home, no kitchen, and nothing stable or grounded. I said to Hank, “Get it through your head: We have no home right now. The baby has nowhere to eat and sleep. What is wrong with you? You are failing.”

Finally, after more drama and yelling, we packed our stuff in a U-Haul to move into the Two Liberty Place apartment building we were supposed to be staying in for the rest of the season, but in a continuation of the disaster that was our life, they moved us into an eight-hundred-square-foot model suite—you know, one of the places you tour when you’re considering moving into a building. Sometimes they have fake TVs made out of plastic or fake fruit in the refrigerator. Well, that was our new home. For a family whose life was being filmed by a camera crew for a reality TV show, things couldn’t have been more ironic. I expected to one day wake up next to Hank and realize he was just a cardboard cutout or, even worse, his stunt double. But we had no choice but to take it.

I had never lived in a condo before, let alone a skyscraper type of situation. Every time I left my apartment building there were people waiting out front to see me. I had my two dogs with me, Martini and Rascal, and they too weren’t used to this urban lifestyle. Plus I had to get a dog walker to avoid the crowds out front who would follow me when I tried to walk them. Everywhere I went with my baby, people were pointing at me. It was a hassle, and it was a little scary. I just wanted to click my heels together and make it all go away. We were not in Hollywood anymore. I was slowly losing my grip on any bit of sanity I had left and my mood was sinking lower and lower.

Any attempts at normalcy were met with even more bizarre results. We hadn’t had a chance to go shopping yet because of the less-than-comfortable living situation, so we didn’t have anything like soap or shampoo or any home products (we had been using the hotel’s products, which the housekeeping service replenished on days when we removed the Do Not Disturb sign). So my first shower in the model shower I was using the model soap to wash myself. I think it had been sitting there for a year; it was as hard as a rock and completely impervious to water.

A month later, when we started actually filming the show we had to take everything we had and move from the thirtieth floor—a.k.a. the model suite—to the fiftieth floor, a much bigger place more suited for shooting a TV show. The new apartment actually belonged to Richie Sambora (from Bon Jovi). He didn’t live there much and because of the economy he didn’t want to sell it and take a loss, so he loaned it out to the building as another model or party room. We moved into it and we were using model silverware and model plates and all showroom-type stuff. It was like a joke! It was like living in a home furnishings store—don’t touch the china! At least it was big.

Putting on smiles even through all our moves. Look: clothes on luggage cart—check-in time!

Finally we got settled and we started getting routines down. I was beginning to feel comfortable again, and I could sense Hank Jr. relaxing a little. That’s exactly when Hank got cut from the Eagles. Just when I got over being really pissed at him and started thinking, “Well, at least we’ve got each other and he’s playing for the Eagles and the show is working out; we’ll go shopping and get some stuff and we’re in this big building and winter will come and we’ll play in the snow and it’ll be an experience and they’ll film it all,” Hank got cut and our future became uncertain again.

It all came as a complete shock, and we totally weren’t prepared for it. Given that games are played each week on Sundays (he was cut in the middle of the season), he had to fly to Minnesota just hours after he got cut to join a new team that wanted him, the Minnesota Vikings. There was no time for good-byes or to pack. It was just like, “Okay, you’re on a new team now, their color is purple, go and join them.” Obviously it’s not the greatest thing to have your husband just up and leave the town he made you move to, but I was supportive. Sort of.

The crazy thing about reality shows is that while most of it seems fun and fluffy, they do catch a lot of the moments that maybe you wish they weren’t around for. When Hank got the phone call that he was cut from the Eagles, the cameras were right there. The show producers came in and were like, “We have to film.” That’s when I plain old said, “Get the fuck out.” I’ve rarely told the cameras to leave, but times like this call for a family to hunker down and figure things out, without a camera crew hovering over them. It was sad because I wanted Hank to be okay and I certainly didn’t want to watch him get fired on national TV. So when the Vikings called to hire him (I’m glad the cameras were there to catch that one though!), I told Hank he better decide and accept fast or I was going to grab the phone and make the deal. He was actually having trouble deciding whether to go or not. Sometimes a wife needs to give her husband a good kick in the ass!

Hank didn’t want to leave us all alone, but going to Minnesota was a guaranteed job for the remainder of the season. We had only a couple of hours to make up our minds because Minnesota was going to go with someone else if Hank said no. Hank didn’t want to leave me and the baby behind, but his agent was pressuring him to make a decision. I took the phone and I just said, “Yes, he is going to play with the Vikings.” I told Hank he better pack his bags and get there. I ordered him to go. It was hard for him—no man wants to voluntarily leave his family—but as a father and a husband he needed to go where the work was. On the show it played out as if it wasn’t a huge deal, but it was a big decision for our family. I started to question why the hell I moved to Philadelphia in the first place and yelled at Hank, telling him it was all his fault and calling him selfish. Things started to unravel really fast. We were never in danger of divorcing, but it got pretty bad.

Hank left and I was stuck there in Philly alone. I knew he had to go, and while I wouldn’t equate it with a soldier heading off to war, I did feel a little bit like a military wife left all by myself to take care of things until Daddy comes home. That night I went to sleep alone and the next morning I woke up alone with the baby. It was a shocker and my reality for the next several months. What else could I do? Hank’s job is to play football and Minnesota wanted him, so that’s where he had to go. From the get-go, I was supportive. But as time wore on, things took a nasty turn for the worse. As wives we are programmed with “support your husband, support your husband, support your husband,” but when I actually got into that situation it was the last thing on my mind.

I began to feel like a single mom as I was left to look after the baby on my own in a strange city for the rest of the season. It wasn’t Hank’s fault, but after a while it took its toll. Doing morning duty every day at seven
A.M
. and handling every feeding, nap, diaper change, tantrum, snack, and bottle, along with all of the washing and cleaning, became impossible on my own. I don’t know how all those moms out there manage it. Doing it for one day plain old sucks, but you’d do anything for your baby. Doing it two days in a row starts to wear on you. By day three (call it three days or seventy-two hours or almost half a week—whatever sounds worse) I was ready to jump off a bridge. I needed my husband there to help out and give me at least one morning off, and I didn’t have it.

That first morning alone it really hit me. Even though I knew I was going to have to dig deep and just deal with looking after the baby on my own (and not give Hank any shit), I still was like, “What the hell just happened?” It was so depressing. I had no network in Philadelphia, few friends, no family, no support. City of Brotherly Love? More like City of Husbandless Kendra. I didn’t know anyone in or anything about this town I was living in. I was all alone in this big dark city when I could have been back home in L.A. with more of a support system and an easier life.