I'll Scream Later (No Series)

by Matlin, Marlee

  “I looked at her, rolled my eyes, and said, ‘We’re flying over the Atlantic Ocean, there is turbulence, you are not at the Four Seasons—deal with it!’”

  That story always makes me smile!

  Africa was absolutely beautiful, and depressing. Once again, extreme poverty was everywhere you turned.

  In Askari I played one-half of a couple tracking the behavior of elephants and struggling to save them from encroaching poachers. At first I was petrified to be around the elephants—they looked massive at a distance. But then, standing next to one and just looking up, their power and their size can just take your breath away.

  The trainers were there all the time with the five or six elephants I was working most closely with. They were well trained and well cared for, and soon I began to relax around them and enjoy the experience.

  Most of the time when we were shooting around the elephants, it was on an open plain, which made things easier. But in one scene near the end, the poachers are trying to shoot the elephants from a helicopter. The elephants begin stampeding, heading right into the sights of the poachers’ rifles, and I run out in front of the elephants trying to scare them into turning and also to keep the poachers from firing.

  In the leadup to the scene, I’m in a van and my niece and I jump out of it to run in front of the elephants. Bill had a walkie-talkie in the van, and he’s crouched down, ready to give us our cues. Bill will never forget what he calls our Jurassic Park scene:

  “I just remember seeing the elephants—they were totally panicked and racing by. I’m looking out of the window thinking that just one little movement by their trunk and they could knock this van over.

  “I remember thinking how much it looked like Jurassic Park to me—the elephants’ eyes were huge and looking right in the window of the van. I have done a lot of scary stuff, but this really scared me.”

  We found out on the day we were to fly out that one of the workers had been killed by one of the elephants. The wranglers had told us never to touch the elephants if they weren’t around, no matter how calm they seemed, and that this sort of tragedy could so quickly happen.

  KEVIN AND I had always talked about having four kids—we thought that number would be the perfect size for us.

  Not long after Brandon was born, Kevin told me if we wanted to have more children he wanted to do so before he hit forty and ran out of energy. So the Grandalski baby boom began.

  Brandon was born in September 2000, and by December of 2003 I’d had two more babies. Tyler Daniel came along twenty-two months after Brandon on July 18, 2002—it was Connie’s birthday, too. She stayed to interpret through Tyler’s birth, then we all sang “Happy Birthday” to Connie in the OR, then sent her off to celebrate with her family.

  Finally, Isabelle Jane arrived on December 26, 2003, just seventeen months after Tyler.

  I remember when I found out I was pregnant that last time. Kevin had taken Sarah on a father-daughter weekend to Mammoth with another neighborhood dad and daughter, John and Casey. It was Oscar weekend and I was due to attend. On Saturday afternoon, Kevin and Sarah were zooming down one of the runs when the sled went off track and was heading straight for a tree.

  Kevin says, “I could see a low branch on the tree and thought I could just put my foot out and stop the sled. What I hadn’t figured on was the block of ice underneath it.”

  Kevin stopped the sled all right; and Sarah, who was sitting in front of him, was safe. But his ankle snapped. He was transported to the hospital there, but he wouldn’t let anyone call me—he knew I’d drop everything to get there.

  The doctors in Mammoth stabilized his ankle while John took the girls for dinner. On Sunday, I headed to the Oscars with no idea what had happened, and Sarah, Casey, John (behind the wheel), and Kevin, his ankle wrapped and elevated, began the long drive back.

  When I got home that night, I walked in and found Kevin already in bed, watching TV, the remote in his hand. I was standing in the doorway in my gown and he looked up, smiled, and said, “You look pretty.”

  That’s my sweet Kevin, but I knew something wasn’t right. “What are you doing in bed?” I asked. He flipped off the covers—his foot was propped up and it looked awful. I was angry that he hadn’t called—and relieved that he was okay.

  Kevin’s broken ankle

  A few days later, he was due to have surgery to repair the ankle. Just before he was rolled into the OR, I gave him a box with a little pregnancy-test stick in it. My final plus. I wanted to make sure that he knew a baby was on the way.

  My Isabelle. I remember walking into the hospital the day after Christmas thinking, What kind of childhood are you going to have with Christmas and Hanukkah and your birthday and New Year’s all at the same time?

  This time the kids were all with me. Finally it was time and the nurse told me I could walk to the OR if I wanted to, but the doctor said only one person could go in with me—my husband or the interpreter.

  “But I need them both!”

  The doctor said he would compromise—only one person with me while they did the spinal injection—“We can’t deal with two people in there who might faint.”

  So I said, “You both wait, you both stay out.” I had requested a nurse who had been there for Sarah’s birth whom I just loved. She held me and talked to me, and the spinal wasn’t as bad as I remembered, though I did ask the doctor as the numbness set in. “Are my legs still there?”

  As always, strict instructions were for no one, including the interpreter, to tell me the sex of the baby. I would hear that only from Kevin, and he told me the baby was a girl. Sarah chose her name—Isabelle—and the Jane is in memory of my uncle Jason, who was so dear to me.

  Usually after each baby, Kevin and I would look at each other and say, “Yeah, I think we could to this again.” After Isabelle’s birth, we looked at the baby, just cleaned up and wrapped in a blanket—such a beautiful baby—then looked at each other and said almost at the exact same time, “We’re done!”

  Photographers at red carpet events were convinced I was constantly pregnant for four or five years, and they were close to right!

  Aaron kept fitting West Wing episodes in between the pregnancies, but it was almost impossible during those years for me to do much of anything except care for our growing family.

  Gap asked me to do a print ad for them when I was pregnant with Tyler—with a photo that I love. I’m in a white, tailored shirt with my big belly peeking out. It was just a beautiful shot, great lighting—the sort that make you appreciate the great photographers of the world.

  AFTER TYLER WAS born I got what ranks as my most difficult project of all time—What the #$*! Do We (K)now!? It tried to blend the story of Amanda, a Deaf photographer that I played who is going through life-changing events, with real-life experts from scientists to psychics talking about quantum physics and the notion that we’re all connected in this world.

  I still had my postbaby body. I was pumping breast milk every day, freezing it, then sending it off to California by FedEx, three days a week, so it would be there for Tyler. It was expensive, but it worked and was worth it to me. And, more important, Tyler was content.

  In one scene my postbaby self has to stand half-naked in front of a mirror in front of a crew, and of course ultimately an audience in a movie theater.

  I don’t think I slept for a week before that scene was shot. But I told myself, this is what the scene is about—there is no such thing as a perfect body. Still I wanted to make sure everyone was off the set except the cameraman, the sound guy, and the director.

  They had to shoot it over and over—they kept shooting with different types of underwear to see which one would cover my butt the best.

  Ironically, everything that I had to go through to shoot the scene made the opposite point—I couldn’t have ended up feeling much worse about my body than I did after shooting that day.

  I remember asking for body makeup. When I was getting smeared with the makeup, one of the
girls who thought I couldn’t read lips kept pointing to different spots saying, “Get that spot there.” Maybe she was trying not to hurt my feelings, but she did. I would rather she had just said something to me.

  I’ve always had issues about my body. My kids tease me because they never see me in shorts or bathing suits. I don’t want to tell them it’s because I don’t feel comfortable with my body. That’s not a message I want to send them, particularly not my daughters.

  It would take Dancing with the Stars to help heal that part of my psyche.

  50

  IN SIFTING THROUGH all of the boxes that hold bits and pieces of memories and moments in my life, I unearthed an old letter from my mother. She sent it in April 1995. There’s no clue that any particular event triggered the letter, it just feels that she wanted to tell me something that had probably been on her mind for years. Make it official. Here’s part:

  “I am sixty-four years old and whatever I am, whatever my personality is, not much is going to change it. If I could change it, I would have to unwind my mind, much like a movie reel and start over again.”

  She talked about her role as Jewish mother, adding that it wasn’t all “chicken soup and eating, but working your butt off trying to instill a real sense of values.”

  Then she got to the heart of what she wanted to say: “I want my children to accept me as I am and not attempt to change whatever I am today…to sum it up, please don’t try and change me.”

  It got me thinking a lot about family—the one I grew up in and the one I am trying to build with Kevin. I never want to write a letter like that to my children—closing the door on the possibility of changing our relationship. It felt like a replay of all the times as I was growing up when the door closed and she retreated to her bedroom if she was having a bad day.

  I’m working to cherish my kids but also to really know each of them as they grow and change. I want our relationships to grow and change, too; I never want that evolving to stop.

  I learn something every day, and I spend a lot of time thinking about my relationship with my mom as Kevin and I make decisions about our kids’ lives. I hope that whatever path I choose along the way, whatever choices I make, something positive will come out of it.

  I know in my heart that parenting is a lifetime of work, and with four kids it is forever a blend of joy, discovery, and chaos—lots of chaos. Here’s a snapshot of my family and our life.

  We are a well-oiled machine. When morning comes, and it comes early, everybody is up and getting ready to go—to school when its in session, to classes during the summer. Breakfast is simple, from cereal and juice to eggs and toast. A nanny helps during the day, but Kevin and I are hands-on parents, from making treats for their classes, driving them to school, guitar lessons, football practice, dancing lessons, making school lunches. No overnight nannies unless I’m out of town.

  My favorite time is picking them up from school. I love it when they pile into the car with stories about the day spilling out all around me. I want to scoop up and save all of those moments—knowing who their friends are, how Brandon’s math test went, what picture Isabelle drew in art class, what joke Tyler played on his best friend.

  It is amazing to watch these four personalities emerge—each so different, so unique.

  Sarah, my oldest, is MIT—Marlee in training. She is a free spirit, extremely friendly, and everybody she meets falls in love with her.

  She’ll be thirteen by the time you are reading this, and I’m already starting to feel the pressure of those teenage years. There’s a boy she likes, but thank goodness it is all still innocent. I try not to take the teenage rants personally—I know this pulling away, this clash with me, is the natural order of things.

  Maybe because we had Sarah to ourselves for her first four and a half years, she’s both a mommy’s and a daddy’s girl. Both Kevin and I are extremely close to her, but she’s very independent. Always has been. No crying on the first day of school—that was me with the tears!

  I just love seeing her bloom, whether it’s watching her swim (she’s an absolute fish in the water with natural ability) or dancing (she loves hip-hop) or singing, playing guitar, and especially writing songs, something that she’s gravitating to more and more as she grows older. She is also an incredible soccer player and has a wicked sense of humor…like me.

  She’s very much a cross between a tomboy and a girlie girl. She has the most beautiful lips—Angelina Jolie lips—that most people would kill for: but she is a teenager, so of course she hates them. She is a social butterfly, adores clothes and loves shoes as much as Carrie Bradshaw. I think about two hundred pairs are in her closet!

  Brandon is Kevin in miniature—all he needs is a mustache. He’s calm and steady, centered, which is remarkable to see in an eight-year-old. Yet he’s sentimental and caring and absolutely such a handsome little boy.

  Brandon has the two most beautiful dimples you could want a child to have. When Sarah was born, the first thing I noticed was the dimple on her right cheek and her beautiful hazel eyes. When I saw Brandon, he had these two deep, deep dimples, dark hair, and dark brown eyes.

  In Brandon, I got my sports fanatic. I wanted to take the love and devotion for the Chicago Bears in my head and plant them in his—I didn’t have to try too hard. He lives and breathes football. He plays flag football, and you’ll hardly ever find Brandon without a football in his hand. He even takes his football to bed with him at night, and the helmet is always close by. On Sundays during the season, if I’m not right there beside him, he’ll come running in to give me updates on the score. We’ll high-five with each score and moan over every setback.

  Brandon is such a sweet boy, reserved, polite, and loves school almost as much as he loves football. He’s a natural at all sports—he plays baseball, soccer, football, and loves basketball, too. He hasn’t tried hockey yet, but I’m guessing that he’ll get around to that, too. I can see him having his heart broken by his first love (grrr!).

  Tyler is mischief with a killer smile. We are alike in many ways. If you put one of my baby pictures next to Tyler’s, it’s almost impossible to tell them apart. He’s my total entertainer! He has blond hair, aqua-blue eyes, and is 100 percent Matlin.

  When he was younger, he loved to rummage around in the closets and dress up and use his imagination in the most creative ways. Tyler is very much my out-of-the-box thinker.

  People love him because he’d so engaging, funny—he calls me Sugar Mama and shimmies his shoulders! He’s definitely a handful! He’s a gymnastic whiz, and though he was a little slower to take to water, now, like Sarah and Brandon, he’s a fish and loves it.

  I remember how much I hated being away from him when I was shooting What the #$*! Do We (K)now!? When I got back, I was so worried that after those weeks away he wouldn’t remember me.

  I flew in, and as soon as I got to the house, I jumped into a shower—I wanted to wash away anything that wouldn’t seem familiar to him.

  Then I walked in his room. He was lying there and looked at me and gave me the biggest, toothless grin. I picked him up and held him so close and sat down on the bed and nursed him. It was one of the most special moments, and I knew then we had a bond that nothing—not time, not distance—could break.

  All of my kids are close, but Tyler and Isabelle are just about inseparable. They’re just seventeen months apart, so Tyler was still such a baby when Isabelle arrived that they’ve really grown up together.

  Where Tyler is so outgoing, Isabelle is my shy one. Nothing, but nothing, gets past Isabelle—she’s very observant. She’ll check everything out before she approaches anyone or anything.

  She’s so pretty, she naturally attracts attention. We are forever having people, strangers really, coming up to gush over her. But she’s like a little cat—she wants life on her own terms and sets the boundaries. Get too close and you’ll hear Isabelle’s infamous Noooooooooo; it arches like a cat’s back into highs and lows.

  But Isabelle t
rusts Tyler. If it’s a new situation, she’ll get behind him, feel his vibe, and if it’s okay, then she’ll approach. While most of my kids love the camera, Isabelle has never been too keen on it. She doesn’t like the attention. But when school started in the fall, the pictures came home this year with Isabelle’s beautiful smile—like Tyler’s, with two dimples.

  When Isabelle was born, we had a crowd at the hospital. I was in the recovery room for a couple of hours, so by the time they rolled me back to my room, everyone had seen the baby. Just as I got there, someone teased, “So who’s Isabelle’s daddy? Where’s the UPS guy?”

  Isabelle had a head of jet-black hair, and the UPS guy, whom I had a huge crush on, had black hair, too. Cute, funny, not my baby’s daddy!

  I got a visit from my longtime friend Bernard Bragg not long after Isabelle was born. He’s done something special for each of my kids, but let him tell you:

  “Here is this story, our favorite. When Marlee had her first child, Sarah, I bought a U.S. savings bond to help open the baby’s first bank account. A few years later when Marlee gave birth to her second child, Brandon, I had to follow suit. Before long, Tyler, the third, came along. I sportingly helped open his account in the bank. For her fourth darling, Isabelle, I mustered up a smile and said to Marlee, ‘Here is yet another bond to open her bank account, and I’ll have to close mine for good.’ To this, Marlee vowed not to have any more so as to save me from a life of poverty.”

  Four is definitely a full house. So many days I wish for one or two more hours, there’s so much to do. For a while Sarah was in a pre-school for both hearing and Deaf children to help her learn sign language, but over the years we’ve developed a sort of hybrid language of our own to communicate. So I don’t feel left out of their lives.