Melissa Explains It All: Tales from My Abnormally Normal Life

by Melissa Joan Hart

  I asked Mark to get down on his knee and ask again. He did, God bless him, and then I accepted his proposal. After a kiss, we ran to the phone to call our families and share the good news. The next day, we drove eight hours to Lake Tahoe to meet up with them for New Year’s Eve. Trisha came with us and kept popping out from the backseat, shouting, “Happy Fiancée Day!”

  We set a date that week. By July 2003, we planned to get married in a destination wedding in Florence, Italy. Seven months of dating, plus seven months before marriage, equaled just over the year I’d always hoped for. Sabrina ended that March, which was sad and hard for me, but I was also ready for a fresh start. I’d begin my next chapter as Mrs. Wilkerson.

  The only concern I had about marrying Mark was how well I’d fit in with his family for the long term. I could promise loyalty, but I couldn’t change the fact that they’d always be a proper Southern family, and my upbringing was more laid-back, bordering on white trash. For instance, when Mark and I were first dating, he started tickling me during a snuggly post-coital moment, and I accidentally farted while sitting on his lap. He pretended to ignore the situation while I, red-faced as ever, made a joke of it by running to the shower laughing. I was mortified, and he never talked about the incident again, which was somehow worse than confronting it. Mark comes from a family that holds doors and controls bodily functions; the Harts are much looser with their manners and toots. After we got engaged, I made the mistake of telling Miss Jenny this story and insisting that I couldn’t marry her son until I heard him pass gas and we leveled the playing field. Her response? “Wilkersons do not do that in public.” I was horrified a second time, but to this day, I still won’t sit her next to my dad at dinner, especially if we’re eating Mexican.

  * * *

  The next few months were a whirlwind. If it weren’t for Soleil knowing me and my tastes so well, they could have been pure hell. When Mark and I got back to L.A. from Tahoe, we started looking for a new home to start our life in right away. Mark didn’t like the idea of staying in a house I’d bought with James and lived in with Weenie. Soleil said she knew the perfect one for us, and after checking it out, we jumped on the opportunity to buy it. Her husband, Jason, had started a production company with Ashton Kutcher called Katalyst, and Ashton’s agent was the one moving out of this amazing ranch in Encino. It had a two-hundred-gallon fish tank that we couldn’t stop staring at. Soleil then suggested an ideal villa for our wedding that she’d visited the year before called the Grand Hotel Villa Cora, so we added it to our list of places to see when we did our search in March. We were taken with the space the minute we saw it and booked it ASAP.

  If you ever meet someone who says coordinating a wedding brought out the best in them or their families, smack them, because they’re lying. Our families had some typical tugs of war, like where to have the rehearsal dinner, what religious traditions the service would follow, and whether to serve chicken or veal for dinner. They also have different customs they like to honor at weddings—my Catholic family wanted a statue of the Virgin Mary present, and his wanted to invite everyone he’d grown up with from their hometown. We met in the middle. My sister bought a small statue of Mary at the Vatican, and we had a seven-hundred-person engagement party in Alabama to celebrate with Mark’s family and friends. There wasn’t a dry eye in the place when he sang “Angel Eyes” to me. But through it all, Mark and I always tried to look at the big picture. He didn’t want to be a demanding groom, and I didn’t want to be a Bridezilla. (Mark did let me call it “my wedding” versus “our wedding,” since I was doing most of the planning.) We’d found true love and were committing our lives to each other during a beautiful ceremony, surrounded by our closest friends and family in Italy. It was a fairy tale coming true.

  When Mark and I announced our engagement in the press, MTV called us about doing a new reality show for them about Hollywood newlyweds. It was tempting, since they could help us pay for a dream wedding, but Mom passed on the opportunity because she thought it was a bad idea for the public to watch us figure out our first tough year of marriage. Reality shows were still a new format, and we weren’t sure what to expect from this. (When we walked away, the network approached Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey, and the result, Newlyweds, basically proved Mom’s point.) So Mom proposed a similar show to ABC Family, since they already liked me and Mom, and we could expect a sweeter outcome. It was called Tying the Knot and covered all the wedding prep, dress shopping, scouting of locations, our engagement party and Alabama tool party, my bachelorette in Jamaica, the week of activities leading up to our nuptials, and our beautiful wedding night. ABC Family even footed most of the bill, including hotel rooms for all eighty-five guests and flights for our families and wedding party as part of the show’s budget.

  In Florence, we had a breathtaking experience with family and friends. We hosted dinner parties almost every evening, took cooking classes during the day, went on museum tours, and organized golf outings for the guys and brunch for the girls. We even had late-night pool parties and an impromptu bachelor/bachelorette party on the villa’s rooftop, overlooking the spectacular view of the Florentine skyline. I wore a strapless Reem Acra dress and had Mark’s tie cut from the same fabric. I stashed a penny in each shoe, which is a Southern tradition for good luck—one from 1976 for my birth year and another from 1977 for Mark’s. I walked down the aisle to a song from Nanny’s music box that my little sister Ali, who was nine at the time, played on the piano. We said “I do” in an elaborately gilded hall draped with white roses, and during the reception, we dined at one long table lit by hanging lanterns. Mark and I did a shot of vodka when the reception was winding down, in homage to the first night we met.

  From the start, I knew Mark was the man for me. He had strong values and put family above all else. He wanted kids, but didn’t care when that happened as long as it was with the right person. He was disciplined and passionate about his work, health, and career. He also felt very strongly, as his lyrics attest, that trust is paramount in a relationship, which meant the world to me. And like me, Mark had a bit of a wild side that was matched by his affinity for planning and thinking of the future. He’s still all these things, and every day he surprises me by peeling back another layer of who he is and wants to become. Ten years later, I want him as badly as I did that night at the Derby and his eyes still make me weak in the knees. I don’t think that will ever change.

  Chapter 13

  OUR TRAVELING FAMILY CIRCUS

  After we finished honeymooning all over the UK and Ireland, Mark swept me into his arms and carried me over the threshold of our new house. Then he practically tripped over the two long extension cords that crossed the foyer and led to our beloved two-hundred-gallon fish tank. Before we left for our Italian wedding, we stocked the container with twenty-five exotic and expensive saltwater swimmers and decorated it with an artificial coral reef to make them feel at home. We even named our babies. Tinker Bell, a yellow cow fish, and Big Al, a red star fish, were among our favorites.

  But now that we were back, something was up. A harried call to my assistant revealed that while we were gone, our power went out and the fuse that kept the tank’s filter going had blown. The result was a smelly fish soup. She would have called, but she didn’t want to upset us on our honeymoon, knowing how attached we were to our little aquatic pets. The aquarium store had cleaned it up and replaced the innocent casualties, before we could say good-bye. I hoped it wasn’t an omen of things to come. Would our first few years of marriage go belly-up, too?

  Life felt unusually calm as we settled in as husband and wife. Mark’s tour had ended, and Sabrina was over. And as mushy newlyweds, neither of us was in a rush to line up new gigs. Before we got hitched, we spent all our time hurrying to each other’s side, sad that we’d soon need to leave again. But under the same roof, we did everything together. We ate breakfast, lunch, and dinner together. We chose furniture and paint colors together. We played tennis on our courts, hung out
by the pool, and spent a lot of time at our in-home movie theater. It was the size of a two-car garage, with 35mm projectors and a remote control that closed the drapes, dropped the curtains, and started the film—all with the press of one button. We snuggled up to watch movies in the evenings, had football parties, and hosted weekly movie nights that screened every film from the American Film Institute’s “100 Years … 100 Movies” list, starting with Citizen Kane. Well, okay, only I did that. Mark wasn’t too interested in vintage celluloid.

  We also locked in our best couple friends during those first few months—Kellie Martin, who I’d met in my Clarissa days, and her lawyer husband, Keith, who looks just like Jimmy Stewart. We’d bumped into them at a charity event before we got married and made a double date for after the wedding. Over Greek tapas, we got so into our conversation that the restaurant had to kick us out at closing time, and we loitered on the curb for another hour. Mark and I even did an analytical postmortem of the entire evening driving home, wondering if they liked us as much as we liked them. We fantasized about doing brunch and going for long walks on the beach. The feeling was mutual.

  Though I liked the change of pace, so much inseparable nesting with Mark began to make me itch for a new adventure. A few weeks into this, my agent called to say I had been offered the part of Sally Albright in a West End stage show of When Harry Met Sally at the Theatre Royal in London. I loved spending time with Mark and our new terri-poo, Copper, but nonstop domestic bliss also made me feel disconnected from the one thing that had kept me consistently fulfilled for the last quarter century—my job. Plus, the script was winning, London in the fall is hard to beat, and Sally is a lively character any actress would die to play. I also knew I’d hit that orgasm scene out of the park, since I’d faked a few climaxes in my day. Relax, pervs. I’m talking about when I was in The Vagina Monologues back in 1998. I know what you were thinking.

  I told my agent I’d take the part, but weeks before I was meant to leave, the theater’s grand chandelier (that hung over a seven-hundred-person audience) slipped from its bearings, causing chunks of the plaster ceiling to fall on the audience below. The fixture and its two thousand lead crystals swung from a safety rope above and chaos broke out. Fifteen people were injured and fewer fans attended the show. Ticket sales never fully recovered, and the play closed. On the day I was supposed to have gone to London, my girlfriend Kimi tried to cheer me up. We spent the afternoon boozing at a local British pub in L.A., stuffing our faces with bangers and mash and sporting tank tops she’d bought us that said “Bollocks.”

  At twenty-seven years old, I was married and unemployed, which basically made me … just a housewife? I’m a careful investor and frugal by nature, so thanks to what we’d put away, we didn’t worry about money. My sanity was another question. I knew I had to meaningfully fill my time or go bananas. I live to be busy, and if my calendar shows even a minute of downtime, I fill it with three different events and squeeze it all in. I wasn’t content watching soaps or sitting by the pool with a book for too long. I’m a doer, and I needed to do. Big time.

  I got involved with some great charities and found new hobbies. I worked closely with Friends of the Family, Lupus LA, and March of Dimes, to name a few that I really cared about. I rounded up auction items, called companies asking for sponsorships, sold tables to people with deep pockets, you name it. If someone were to ask me to mop floors to raise money for these causes, I’d have probably done that, too—I was so eager to be industrious. I also began running five miles, twice a week, with Kellie. She started training for marathons and I tried to keep up, but my knees couldn’t carry me past ten miles a day. I attempted to run a 10K with her, or a little over six miles, but even then I slowed her down. We began hiking the canyons around L.A. together instead. All this exercise made me hungry, so I then signed up for cooking classes. I roped Kellie and my sister Trisha into joining, but once again, Kellie the Wunderkind excelled and is now one teaspoon shy of being a gourmet chef on Food Network. The only thing that stuck with me were recipes for mashed cauliflower and chicken stuffed with goat cheese. I made these every week—just because I had the hours of a housewife doesn’t mean I could sauté like one—until Mark stepped up to the stove and whipped out his family’s Southern specialties.

  Though Mark was always kind about my culinary hits and misses, we bickered a lot as newlyweds, as most do. Whenever I fought with guys I dated before him, I got them to behave by threatening to break up with them. But being Mark’s wife took that choice off the table. In fact, he often reminded me that divorce will never be an option with us—big surprise, considering his mama once told me in her thick Wiregrass accent, “Wilkersons marry for liiiife.” As comforting as that was, it didn’t help me communicate how I felt sometimes. So Mark and I had to learn how to fight fair, and a lot of times, that included choosing our battles. And by battles, I mean nitpicky quarrels about nothing momentous. Even today, we’re always at constant odds about nonsense. But in a strange way, all that squabbling reminds us that we’re passionate people, and let’s face it—making up is way more fun when you’re hot and bothered.

  One of the biggest newlywed fights we ever had was about ketchup. Yes, I just said that. Mark wanted to store it in the pantry, I wanted it in the fridge, and we kept moving the container back and forth after we each used it. The issue came to a head when I was stocking bulk-size Heinz bottles for a BBQ, and Mark saw me put one in the fridge. He’d had enough of eating his favorite condiment cold, and he couldn’t let it slide anymore. Not in his house.

  “Show me where it says that ketchup must be refrigerated! Show me!” he exploded, adding that at restaurants, the ketchup is left on tables all day long. Right? Right? I hadn’t thought of this, but I told him I didn’t care what the bottle said, or who kept it out where, because for me, it was about taste. I liked my ketchup cold, especially when I dipped my eggs in it.

  “I didn’t realize that when I took your last name I had to take on your condiment preferences too,” I said, matching his heightened tone. Then I chucked a full plastic bottle of ketchup at him, hoping that all those years as a wide receiver would pay off and he’d catch it. We were each serious about winning the argument, but we were admittedly having a little fun with it too. Mark caught the bottle, but then picked me up and carried me outside, plopped me on the roof of the car like Mitt Romney’s Irish Setter, and locked me out of the house. I ran around to the doggy door, crawled through it, and went back to putting ketchup in our fridge.

  Eventually we calmed down and resolved to keep one bottle cold and one in the pantry. We still do, although I occasionally catch Mark using the cold ketchup now. I guess I should just be glad that Mark doesn’t put his warm ketchup on his pasta. That would be unforgivable.

  Though Mark and I never argued about it outright, a more serious sticking point that first year was my mom’s relationship with Mark. Although Mom got along with my three previous long-term relationships, plus a handful of decent boyfriends, she turned green with envy when she met Mark. She must have sensed how serious our relationship was early on, because she always seemed uncomfortable around him, and then once we got engaged, she began to act out. Whenever we talked, she took on a needy tone, and she also began picking ridiciulous fights with me, like about whether my arms were too fat to wear tank tops on Sabrina (I said no, but she insisted—this, while I was eating spaghetti with garlic bread that she’d made me). I think she feared that Mark would take her place in my life. Meeting The One meant she’d no longer be my plus-one for parties, award shows, premieres, and trips. In fact, after we got engaged and the initial novelty of being Mother of the Bride wore off, her response was, “Looks like I’ve lost my travel partner.” It seemed a small price to pay for her daughter to gain a husband, but to be fair to Mom, Sabrina ended around the same time, and my sister was getting married that same year, so she may have felt overwhelmed by so much change.

  What I wish she’d realized was that building a family meant
we’d include her in our lives in different, though no less special, ways. Our Encino house was closer to hers, so we never missed birthdays or Sunday night dinners. After a few years, particularly after our first son was born, all that tension dissipated, and she became our strongest support. Their major turning point happened when Mom’s brother died and Mark reached out on his own and offered to help her clean out his apartment. Mom and Mark now have a terrific relationship with mutual understanding and respect that puts my heart at ease.

  * * *

  Almost two years into being a Mrs., it was time to seriously get my post-Sabrina career on track. I decided to produce and direct next—I wanted to show the world my vision, and my ability to tell a story on the big screen. In January 2005, I began working on a short film called Mute that my agent and good friend Elena helped me set up and get running. I produced and financed it with my friend Steve Fischer, who I knew from my partying days. I met him through Soleil, and we spent a lot of time drinking by his pool, going to spin class, and hanging out at bars; he was a Wall Street guy who I basically convinced to get into the business. I helped cast a bride played by Emily Deschanel, who’d just signed on to shoot Bones for Fox, and my buddy Patrick Dempsey as her groom (we met on a private jet to the Indy 500), though Grey’s Anatomy caused scheduling conflicts, so I replaced him with Dylan Neal, the love interest from Sabrina’s last season. Even director Garry Marshall made a cameo as the priest who married this pair. Casting the lead, a deaf-mute who tells the story with very little dialogue and mostly voice-overs, was much tougher. I needed someone with expressive eyes, and the only person I could think to pull it off was my sister Emily. She had to seem both believable and likable, despite her hurt soul, all while trying to sabotage her sister’s wedding to the man she loved. Because the character was deaf, all of that had to come across on Emily’s face. Although she was initially nervous that she couldn’t do it justice, she agreed to do the part.