I'll Scream Later (No Series)

by Matlin, Marlee

  While we were eating, Kevin said, “Well, I have a surprise for you, too. I bought tickets for the two of us to go to Hawaii for your thirtieth birthday.”

  Now, I’m an actress, I should be able to pull off the thrilled-because-your-husband-surprised-you-with-tickets-to-Hawaii reaction, but I was having a hard time of it. My birthdays are usually not two-person affairs. They range from crowded to massive. I honestly didn’t know how to tell Kevin I was really hoping to have a big party at home. So I didn’t.

  Besides, I tried telling myself, we were still getting used to this whole baby thing, so maybe a quiet getaway with just the two of us would be perfect.

  GETTING PREGNANT WAS definitely worth it—they are definitely worth it, my children. But with all four I had the worst morning sickness for the first three months. I could not keep much of anything down. Just the smell of chicken would send me flying for the nearest bathroom. The nose-stomach connection for me was so intense that if I was even downwind of a chicken restaurant, I would know it—my insides would start churning.

  One day in August during my first pregnancy as I was nearing the end of my third month, I threw up. It was worse than usual and the barf was so violent that some splashed back up on my face from the toilet. Yuck!

  After that, I washed my face, brushed my teeth, looked myself in the bathroom mirror, and said, “That’s it! I am not doing this anymore!” And that was the end of it. The morning sickness stopped.

  In case you’re wondering, yes, I tried it with the three pregnancies that followed, hoping it was just a mind-over-matter thing. But, no. It would only work when I was heading into that fourth month. I guess I just got lucky that day.

  That was a good thing because Kevin and I were due to head to Hawaii in a few days for the birthday trip he’d planned. Jack was already on his way to Italy to attend the baptism of a friend’s kid.

  We headed first to the island of Lanai. It’s so beautiful there; if you get the chance, you should go. I had a great time relaxing, swimming, reading on the beach, eating, which thankfully I could do again. Jack called from Italy to wish me a happy birthday. It was the first birthday of mine he’d missed since we started working together a decade earlier.

  On the last day we were in Lanai, I got flowers from Henry and Stacey wishing me a happy thirtieth. I was thrilled, but thought it was so strange that they knew where we were. Then we were off to Maui, with no time to second-guess.

  The weather in Maui was miserable, cold for Hawaii, and I was miserable. On my birthday, Kevin left and said he’d be back in an hour. He didn’t come back for three and a half hours—I was not a happy camper. It was my birthday, I was pregnant, I was alone, I missed Lanai.

  He finally got back about four fifteen and said, “Let’s hit the showers, I’ve gotten a car and made a reservation for us to go to a different hotel for a luau.” I didn’t understand why we had to be in such a rush, but he said we had to be there by five. “I told them it was your birthday and they want to sing, so we really have to go.”

  I was not moving fast, or at least not fast enough for Kevin. He was gentle but he kept hurrying me along. It seemed as if nothing was going right, the shower didn’t work, I didn’t really have anything I wanted to wear. My hair was wet. Finally he said, “Just put your hair in a ponytail, there’s no time to blow it dry.”

  When we got in the car, Kevin floored it! I’d never seen him drive so fast. “What are you doing? We’re having a baby, slow down!” When we got to the hotel, the valet seemed to recognize him and took the car right away. We got out and Kevin started running; he ran, I walked. When we got there, we found a bunch of empty tables, and I thought to myself, Great birthday, I just want to go back to Lanai.

  Check out Jack’s coconuts!

  Then the show started. The hostess said, “Okay, everyone get up, we’re going to learn the hula.” I’m thinking, Thanks a lot, Kevin. But I got up, and the next thing I saw was Jack onstage wearing a coconut bra and a grass skirt doing the hula. Then everybody from my family started pouring out onto the stage.

  And so began my thirtieth birthday party, with dozens of friends and family who’d flown in to celebrate with me, including Jack, who clearly wasn’t in Italy at all.

  It was the most incredible birthday ever. Kevin had managed to keep it a complete surprise—and I thought I was the only actor in the family.

  He and Jack had been planning it for months. The present I treasure most is a big book filled with birthday memories from all my friends and family. They’d asked everyone to send in a page—writing as much or as little as the person wanted.

  I look through it now and am reminded of how rich I am from the love and support I get from the friends I’ve made over the years. The book is about two inches thick, and if I’m ever feeling down, I only need to pull it out and open it to any page and I know I’ll feel better.

  Every page is a favorite. Many recapture moments that are incredibly special to me. Some from those who are especially dear to me I won’t share, but here are snippets from a few that made me laugh or made me cry:

  From my friend Janet: “I’ve learned many things from you. Below I’ve listed just a few: 1. Choose your friends carefully and only show your tattoo to those who are worthy.”

  From my friend Kirstie: “Dear Marlee, I love you madly, however, you are now too old for me.”

  From my former accountant Gary: “Dear Marlee, You do not owe City National Bank $1,000,000 by the way.”

  From Arsenio: “Would you give me one of your cars to put my ‘SWDJB’ plate on?”

  From Billy Joel: a “Happy Birthday” and a sketch of the piano man as a piano! It’s amazing how a face can fit into the shape of a baby grand.

  From my friend Kathy: “You know, Marlee, one of my very first auditions as an actress was for the movie Children of a Lesser God. And you got it. Thank God! Cause if I had to swim naked in that pool I know I would have gotten a chest cold. But then again at least something would have been on my chest.”

  From my dearest Henry: “To watch you become the woman you are today gives me a sense of pride, touches me deeply and brings the hugest smile to my face.”

  And finally, from my mom and dad, who wrote possibly the longest poem known to modern man, thirty-three stanzas in all, ending with:

  Thank you for the happiness and also, Yes,

  The tears you’ve brought to our lives.

  It hasn’t all been fun but,

  The bottom line when all is said and done,

  The rewards are there….

  So now, I’ll close with best Wishes,

  And Happy Birthday and Always…

  Our love and Kisses,

  Mom and Dad

  For other reasons, also, I’ll never forget this birthday. It was a difficult time for us; an early blood test had indicated our child could possibly be born with Down syndrome. I had an amino before we left, but the results would take a while and we had left still not knowing the outcome.

  One morning the baby stopped moving. I couldn’t feel a kick or a push or anything. I went down to the pool by myself and lay there and talked and talked to this baby. When I patted my belly and the baby kicked, I ran up to the room, opened the door, looked at Kevin, and said, “Yes!”

  It was terrifying, wondering what would happen, but I was praying that we wouldn’t be faced with deciding what to do if the baby had Down syndrome. We wanted this baby very much.

  We called the minute we got back home, and the doctor’s office said he would get back to us in a couple of minutes. After what seemed like forever, the phone rang.

  “Can I see you smile over the phone? We have good news, the baby is healthy.”

  After that, everything else was a snap.

  46

  WITH REASONABLE DOUBTS canceled, I was once again a struggling actor. One of the most intriguing opportunities opened up with Seinfield. They were playing around with the idea of lipreading and deafness for an episode and asked if I would be
game.

  That’s like someone asking if you’d like to win the lottery. This was my first chance to really show what I could do with comedy, and it was Seinfeld, smart, funny, unconventional, and such a remarkable collection of actors with Jerry Seinfeld at its center.

  I said yes right away, but as the day approached for me to show up on set, I was intimidated. This was season five and the actors had worked together from the beginning. I knew they must be so close by now, able to play off one another completely organically. I wasn’t sure how it would feel walking into that group.

  But it was great!

  Jerry, George, Elaine, and Kramer—I mean Jerry, Jason, Julia, and Michael—could not have been more welcoming. We had such fun on the set and I loved the way the script was so irreverent. There were no sacred cows, especially the Deaf.

  I realize I’m biased, but I still think “The Lip Reader” is one of the series’ classics. Whether it’s Jerry and George discussing the relative merits of PABA in sunscreen or Elaine pretending she can’t hear so she doesn’t have to talk to a limo driver; Kramer as a disaster of a ball boy at the U.S. Open; or George saying that having a lip-reader is like having Superman for a friend.

  In one of my two favorite scenes, Jerry, George, and I are having dinner, and George starts to hatch a plan to have me read the lips of his ex-girlfriend at a party. He and Jerry begin assessing the pros and cons, and a crazy conversation unfolds behind their hands, drinks, napkins, food, anything they think will keep me from using my superpowers on them. It was funny dialogue, but even funnier physical humor.

  In my other favorite scene, Jerry and I are working out the details for our next date. I turn my head away just as he says we’ll be taking a car service. When I look back, he’s asking, “How about six? Six is good. You have a problem with six?” A series of my reactions mirror his dialogue—an arched eyebrow, a gasp of disbelief, a look of disgust—enough to clue anyone watching that I’ve mistaken what he said for “How about sex? Sex is good. You have a problem with sex?”

  That’s one of the things I’ve always loved about Seinfeld, the writers expect the audience to get it. And they did. That freed both me and the other actors to play the moments for all they’re worth.

  A few months later it was great to hear that I’d been nominated for an Emmy for that performance. Icing on the cake. I did actually bring a cake to the set for everyone on the day we wrapped.

  Emmy-nomination day was a particularly good one when it finally rolled around in 1994. I was nominated in two categories, Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy for Seinfeld, and Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama for a Picket Fences episode called “The Dancing Bandit.”

  WHEN DAVID KELLEY heard I was looking to do more television as I coped with losing Reasonable Doubts, he decided to write me into an episode of Picket Fences, the quirky drama/comedy about the folks in small-town Rome, Wisconsin.

  And so the Dancing Bandit was born. In the bandit, David had created a character that had so many little bits of my life stitched into it, the episode will always be one of my favorites.

  First there was the bandit, who is Deaf. Her MO, which the FBI has been tracking, is charming. She truly “stages” robberies—complete with specific roles that her cohorts play. She’s delightful, mischievous, entertaining; after she’s finished a heist, boom box at the ready, she takes a moment to dance for bank patrons on her way out the door.

  David knew my history—I’d grown up signing songs. He knew I loved to dance, so it was a nice touch, and I’m sure he was one of a handful of people who wasn’t surprised in the least that I turned up nearly a decade later on Dancing with the Stars.

  In one of the episode’s plot twists, he has me and three others in my gang walk into a school disguised as the characters from The Wizard of Oz—Dorothy, the Tin Man, the Lion, and the Scarecrow. So just as the role of Dorothy was a career changer when I was eight, it was again when I was thirty.

  To cap off this totally surreal escapade, when my character needs to be airlifted to a hospital for a special procedure, the only hospital able to do it is located in Chicago—so at the end of the episode, David airlifted me safely back home.

  The Dancing Bandit was never intended to be anything but a one-shot appearance. But as David explains, “There’s a lot of humanity to Marlee that comes through even if she’s holding a gun or kicking down a door. She’s profoundly intuitive, which makes her a great actress, she always finds the truth within the character.

  “As the Dancing Bandit, she played a bank robber, who ended up being mayor of the town…. Even for that series, that was a big character arc, but she’s so truthful she was able to take the audience with her on a believable ride.”

  The episode of Picket Fences that is always at the top of my favorites list is “Snow Exit,” which aired on January 19, 1996.

  By then, I had become an occasional guest star as Mayor Laurie Bey. The Dancing Bandit had morphed into one of Rome’s upstanding citizens, but then she was a Robin Hood–style bandit even in her criminal days.

  I’d also become pregnant with my first child. By this time David had moved on to focus on Chicago Hope and was getting Ally McBeal under way, but the writers decided to write my pregnancy into the script.

  We shot it a couple of months before it was set to air, when I was around seven months pregnant. In the episode, the town is hit by a blizzard and I go into labor at the police station—I have to deliver there. So I give birth—breathing and sweating and pushing and pushing. A nurse/midwife was on set to monitor me to make sure my acting wasn’t so good that it induced real labor—and Mayor Laurie Bey gave birth on a cold winter day.

  MY BABY WAS due on January 15. The day came and went and no baby. My doctor told me not to worry, first babies are often late. I remember asking, “When will it come?”

  “Oh, you’ll know when you’re ready. You’ll have contractions and your water will break. Don’t worry about it.”

  Don’t worry? Me?

  Kevin and I went to sleep on the eighteenth, but I was soon awake, pacing the floors. The doctor was right; I knew it was happening.

  I waited until daylight, then woke Kevin up. He remembers, “Marlee was sitting up in the bed. She told me she’d been up all night having contractions, but she didn’t want to wake me. She said, ‘I thought I better let you sleep because I think we are having the baby today.’”

  You couldn’t have found two happier people anywhere that day than the Grandalskis as we grabbed a suitcase and got ready to drive to the hospital to have our first child.

  One of the few things Kevin has always insisted on is that we not know the sex of our children before they are born. This despite the technology, despite the amnio, the sonograms, all the ways it’s possible to have that question answered long before the birth. He says, “My feeling is that it’s the last true surprise left on earth, that if God wanted you to know what kind of baby you were going to have, there’d be some sign, you’d turn pink or blue….

  “Marlee kept saying, ‘I don’t know what color to paint the room, I don’t know if I should get boy’s clothes or girl’s clothes.’”

  “I said, ‘When the kid pops out, we can paint the room and buy some clothes because they aren’t going to need anything right away, and they don’t care about what color the walls are anyway—at least not until they’re twelve.’” (The kid who popped out was twelve as he was recalling this story. Sarah turned thirteen in January.)

  How could I not fall for that argument? My husband, a romantic at heart?

  Now you might think that’s easy to do—keep the sex of the child a secret. But it’s really tough in the delivery room, when I have a baby, there’s usually a crowd. At a minimum there’s the doctor, the anesthesiologist, the pediatrician, the nurses, Kevin, an interpreter—someone I can’t do without. Kevin can sign, but a new father in a delivery room has a few other distractions—Liz, when she can make it, and often one or two more family members.

  Ja
ck faints at the sight of blood, so he’s always with the waiting-room contingent. For baby number one, I got Bill Pugin to interpret. By the time I had the other three, I’d met Connie Schultz, a mother of seven. We met at a Baby and Me class, where she was interpreting. She’s become a good friend, is an expert signer, and besides being at my side for births, has come to sets more than a few times to work with me, too.

  I’d planned to deliver the baby naturally, but I just wasn’t dilating, and after about fifteen hours the doctor said we needed to do a C-section—now. And so Sarah Rose Grandalski entered this world. Kevin walked out into the waiting room, grinning from ear to ear, but not saying a word. We’d come equipped with two buttons—a blue one that said BOY and a pink one that said GIRL. When the assembled masses finally noticed the pink button, there was much laughing and crying.

  A couple of hours later, with Sarah in my arms, we watched Laurie Bey give birth on Picket Fences. Forty-three years earlier, on January 19, Lucille Ball had given birth to Desi Arnaz Jr., and on that night her character, Lucy Ricardo, had given birth on I Love Lucy to the child we’d come to know as Little Ricky, on the same network, CBS. I loved that Sarah became a little bit of history that day.

  47

  FOR A FEW glorious months I did nothing but feed, change, bathe, dress, coo, cuddle, and play with Sarah. I loved this baby girl beyond measure and I adored being a mother.

  People say you can’t imagine what you will feel about your children before you hold them that first time, you can’t understand that it’s something that is so much bigger than anything that has come before in your life. They’re right. It was magical even through all the sleepless nights, the endless diaper duty, and the desperate attempts to lose all that baby weight.