I'll Scream Later (No Series) Page 4

  Every year when the weather warmed up, my parents would set up a plastic pool out back, one with a slide. I remember coming home from school in the spring and getting off the bus and being able to smell the water. I’ll never forget that sweet smell.

  My room had wallpaper with strips of flowers, a desk, a black-and-white TV, and a queen-size bed, which was a big deal to me. My brother Marc described it as a “princess room” because all the furniture in it was white. It felt safe, my little bit of territory. Most of the time when I was younger, it was covered in coloring books and crayons and comics and clothes. And when I got older, Teen Beat and Tiger Beat magazines, with posters of Leif Garrett, Scott Baio, and Shaun Cassidy covering my walls.

  But as much as I loved having my own room—and I loved it even more after Eric moved and Marc and I both traded up for bigger, better spaces—I didn’t like being alone. I felt starved for attention, and to get at least some of that need satisfied, that meant being in my parents’ room or the kitchen, the two places in the house where everyone hung out.

  We had Apples, a schnauzer, who was old by the time I came along. Apples was a little doll and more than happy to take care of any of my unwanted food under the table at dinnertime. Eric had a German shepherd named Solo, who was the sweetest dog. She disappeared one day when Eric and Gloria took her with them to visit my uncle Steve. My uncle believed she’d been stolen out of the front yard. We pasted the neighborhood with flyers and pictures of Solo, but to no avail.

  I was crushed when we lost her and couldn’t imagine not being able to throw my arms around her and bury my face in her soft fur. One of my favorite childhood photos is of me and Solo—we’re both smiling. Years later I would name my production company Solo One Productions in her memory.

  JUST ABOUT EVERYONE has a teacher who has such a positive impact that you remember him or her forever. For me it was Jane Endee, now Sister Mary Elizabeth, a marriage and family therapist at the Franciscan Life Center in Meriden, Connecticut. It’s no small irony that one of the greatest influences on this nice Jewish girl was a woman who became a nun!

  One of the downsides of putting me in the local school system was that I never knew which school I’d be going to until a few days before classes would begin each year. The district couldn’t afford to set up special-needs classes for every school, so they would change where those students went from year to year.

  Though we never moved, I would go to five different schools before I reached high school. But at one of those I got Miss Endee.

  While I was in fifth grade, Miss Endee came to our school as a teacher. She was in her senior year at Northwestern University and we were her student-teaching assignment. The classes were small—state law limited the class size to eight kids at the most—so when you had a great teacher, you noticed and remembered. She always found ways to keep us engaged and challenged, and she made me feel as if anything were possible.

  She remembers, “They were all outstanding kids in their own way, but what was outstanding about Marlee was her ability to engage. In special ed classes there are lots of observers. With Marlee, there was no difficulty communicating. She was outgoing with just about anybody who came into her life—very bright, very animated. She had an inner spark that always came through. I do think also she was very intuitive even when she was young. She really knew how to relate to people depending on who they were, she does have that ability to know what a situation calls for, how to respond.”

  That instinct would serve me well years later in Hollywood, where much of your future rests with making directors or producers or casting agents or costars feel comfortable that you can do the job.

  Miss Endee’s father was an amateur magician and she had him come to the class to do a magic show. What I remember most about that day is that he pulled a rabbit out of a hat, which had all of us absolutely captivated. Later in the act he used rabbits again, but at the end of the show, I only saw one rabbit. I came up to him afterward wanting to know what happened to the other rabbits. I had kept count. He would tell that story for years after.

  I had Miss Endee again when I was in high school. As always, she kept us on our toes, expecting that we could excel if we tried. So in 1994 when I was asked by the Walt Disney Company to be a presenter at their annual American Teacher Awards, I asked if Sister Mary Elizabeth could present with me.

  She remembers, “It was in Washington, D.C., and covered live. I was a mess. I went there with my parents, and Mother Sean went with me. It was wonderful. Marlee was totally focused on us. And we had those little scripts that were written for us. It was quite an experience.”

  Some years later, I was asked to become involved in Target’s Take Charge of Education program, including an ad campaign celebrating the important teachers in our lives. I knew I wanted to be shot with Sister Mary Elizabeth. The company flew her to L.A. for the photo shoot. She still remembers the fun of landing at LAX to find a limo waiting for her, not the sort of transportation a Franciscan nun usually has.

  She says, “Oh my gosh, Marlee had hair and makeup for me. They asked me what size I was to get wardrobe. But what I most remember is that Marlee made a point of bringing her two children to the photo shoot so that I could see them. It’s amazing to me to know that I taught her and to see how she has become such an amazing woman and has impacted so many people, what a powerful presence she is. But for me almost the greater thing is that she has been able to make this wonderful marriage and have these beautiful children.”

  It was a wonderful chance for me, in a way, to say thanks to Sister Mary Elizabeth for her part in helping me to believe in myself.

  I WOULDN’T CALL my parents couch potatoes; they were more like bed potatoes. Some of my earliest memories are of coming home from school and knowing I could find my mom, propped up in that bed, smoking a cigarette and talking on the phone for hours.

  My parents had a huge king-size bed, lots of pillows, and everyone would crawl into it and watch TV. Everyone sat and talked in this comfortable room. My dad was always scratching my back or the bottoms of my feet—and I loved it. It was quality time. One of my favorite memories is of my dad cutting up oranges and bringing them to that giant bed. We’d sit there and watch TV and eat the orange slices together—nectar of the gods!

  When I was little, we’d always watch Electric Company and Zoom—I loved them because they were so visual, a lot of singing and dancing. I tried to watch Sesame Street, but would get frustrated because I didn’t understand the puppets.

  As I got older, my favorite shows were cop shows—high on action and low on dialogue, such as Mannix and Hawaii Five-O. My dad knew I liked thrillers and we’d look for them together in TV Guide. They were always the movies that were playing at 1 or 2 a.m. and he’d promise to wake me. The next morning I’d always ask, “Why didn’t you wake me up?” “I tried,” he’d say, “I tried.” Yeah, right!

  TV also began my love of sports—something else I could watch that didn’t need translating. I’d sit there for hours, particularly with my grandfather Eli, my grandmother Ann’s last husband, just watching, not talking.

  He’d crack nuts for both of us, and we’d eat and cheer and watch. It was such comfortable silence we shared, it felt natural. If you want to know how deep and unshakable my Chicago roots are, just ask me about sports. All my teams, even to this day, are there—The Bulls, The Cubs, The White Sox, The Bears, The Blackhawks, The Chicago Fire. And, of course, they are The Best.

  ONE OF MY favorite memories growing up is when we had absolutely nothing planned and my dad would pile us into the car and head out for Chicago. We lived about twenty minutes from the city, and we’d get in that car and just drive and drive for hours.

  My dad was the best tour guide, showing us all the sights, telling funny stories. In his own way, he was incredibly entertaining, with a black sense of humor. My brother Marc always tried to make sure I understood as much of what was going on as possible.

  I loved being with my family, was st
arved for attention. Always wanting to talk. I think that’s why it was such a shock for me years later when the Deaf community lashed out when I used my voice to present an Oscar in 1988. I had spent a lifetime talking, it was almost as natural for me as signing.

  I also remember trying to deal with the feeling when my family didn’t want to talk to me—it wasn’t that they didn’t want to, it was more that it was never enough for me. I felt hollow, and though I’d try to shrug it off, I know deep down it hurt, just another feeling to try to bury. I sometimes felt they didn’t want to make the extra effort it took to understand me or explain what they were saying. But when they did, I loved it. I’d ask so many questions about anything that popped into my mind. Always talking, always asking questions.

  MOST OF THE time when I wasn’t in school, unless it was really frigid, which it often was during those Illinois winters, I’d be outside playing with the other neighborhood kids. My parents worried that given all the time we spent playing in the street or crossing it, I would get hurt since I couldn’t hear approaching cars. So they convinced the city to put up a special caution sign: in bright yellow and black, it read CAUTION: DEAF CHILD CROSSING.

  My very own road sign. Sometimes being different came with perks. Deaf Child Crossing would become the title of my first children’s book, published in 2002, about the adventures of a young Deaf girl named Megan who lived on Morton Street and was, well, a little like me.

  7

  WHEN I THINK of my childhood, so many days begin with Liz. Long blond curls bouncing, always laughing and smiling, loved bubble gum so much she wrote an essay about it one year.

  Just as she was absorbed into my family, I was absorbed into hers. Sometimes it felt as if her father, Ted, had adopted me, and over the years I would often turn to him for advice, and at least once for financial help when I hit rough times in the acting world. Unless Liz was off on a day trip with my family, I’d go with them on Sundays for lunch and a swim at the country club.

  The Tannebaums started taking me on many of their family vacations, which opened up a different world to me. I’m sure it helped them, too, since the family never really learned to sign though Liz was Deaf from birth.

  Where my family was middle-class, Liz’s was not just well off but wealthy. I think when I first dreamed of movie-star houses, I imagined something like Liz’s house, a maid who lived with them and cooked for them. When they took me on vacations, it was for two or three weeks to Florida, Palm Springs, or Acapulco, where they bought another home. Most of the time, we stayed at the Princess Hotel on Revolcadero Beach, where Liz had her first French kiss.

  We went to different schools until we were in third grade. That was the year I transferred to Wilmot Elementary School in Deer-field, Illinois, and my life changed. A lot of other Deaf kids were there, and I began to seriously learn signing. All of a sudden I had a group of friends who understood everything I said and, more important, all the things I was feeling. That’s also where they gave me my name sign.

  I guess the easiest way to understand a name sign is to think of it like a special nickname. Instead of your name spelled out by hand, it’s a blend of your name, usually the first letter, and your personality in some way. Mine is an M but up by the cheek because I have dimples.

  I had an identity. Finally! I thought it was the coolest thing. My mother made up Liz’s name sign—which takes the sign for “I love you” and blends it with a Z in the air, the movement you do when you sign the letter Z.

  I’M NOT EXAGGERATING when I say that Liz and I spent almost all of our time together. Every Saturday while I went to rehearsal at the Center on Deafness, Liz would sit and watch until it was over so we could go play. One day the director walked over and asked if Liz wanted to take on a role.

  She remembers, “I was very shy. The play was Peter Pan, and of course Marlee had the lead. But the director, Kathy, asked if I wanted to play one of the Lost Boys. I was nine years old. When Marlee saw that, she was like ‘Yes, yes, yes, go for it.’ And so I started getting involved not just in that play but ICODA [International Center on Deafness and the Arts]. My first time onstage with spotlights, the moment freaked me out, but I also loved it and I thank Marlee for that.”

  We were forever getting into trouble together, and as friends do, at times we fought. Our roughest year was our junior year of high school—we didn’t speak for almost the entire year.

  Now I can’t even imagine how we managed that when we couldn’t usually stand to go for a day without talking. If we couldn’t see each other, we’d spend hours on the phone—using the TTY, a text telephone system that was really the early version of instant messaging today. But both of us can be stubborn, and that year was one of those times.

  When I think of what caused our rift, I remember we were running with two different crowds, and Liz didn’t want to get involved with mine. As Liz remembers it, the split happened over the rights to share her locker:

  “Before and after school all the Deaf kids would hang out in one corner of the schoolyard, near where the bus picked us up and dropped us off. My locker was right there, but Marlee’s was upstairs way on the other side of the building. So I was like ‘Use mine, use mine.’ But I had a friend named Mitch, who was a sweetheart, would do anything for me, that Marlee just did not connect with. He also was using my locker. To Marlee it was a big thing and she got angry and said, ‘You’re not my friend.’ So for a year, even though we were in the same class, we wouldn’t look at each other or talk to each other.”

  But one day we looked at each other and started to laugh. I’m glad I didn’t win that argument. I know now I was being manipulative and ridiculous. Liz and I made up right before lunch, so we skipped class and went to her car and got so stoned. We’ve had our ups and downs since then, but eventually it always comes back to the connection we have that just can’t be broken. When I think of it now, maybe that was the first time I felt Liz might like someone more than me, and that would be a loss I couldn’t take.

  That day, we went back to class still incredibly stoned. Liz ended up confessing to one of the counselors, which immediately meant that I was going to be involved somewhere along the way.

  I remember I was in seventh period and the dean of students came into my classroom, looked at me, and motioned for me to come with him. We went to the office of the teacher who ran the Deaf-education program. She sat looking at me, the school’s police officer was looking at me. Everybody was looking at me.

  “Were you smoking?” the police officer asked, using the universal sign for taking a toke off a reefer.

  “No.”

  “I’m going to ask you one more time, did you smoke?”

  My heart was out the window and the school cop just stood there with his arms crossed. I didn’t know if he was disappointed in me or if he thought it was no big deal.

  They turned my purse upside down and rifled through everything, but no drugs were there. Then the dean came over and sniffed my hair. He was furious.

  “Okay, fine, we’re going to take you downstairs to the nurse’s office, and we’re going to see if you smoked or not.”

  I remember walking down this long hallway, passing all the counselors’ offices, one by one. Then finally we get to the nurse’s and walk in, and Liz is on one of the cots. She looks at me and starts, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I had to tell, I had to, I’m so so sorry.”

  I thought, I am so busted. My heart was racing, I was trying to figure out how I could get out of this one. The nurse took my blood pressure and said to everyone in the room, “Yes, she’s high.”

  At that moment I blurted out something that I would have given anything to take back, it still bothers me all these years later.

  “My father hit me this morning.”

  Instantly they dropped the entire pot investigation and instead called social services to report possible abuse. The county workers called my mom and dad, came by and talked to them. It was horrible. My mom and I had had a fight that morni
ng—lots of yelling, nothing else—and my dad had tried to intervene. He never in my life hit me, ever. And I still so regret that day.

  While my family was going through that trauma, Liz was suspended from school for three days since she had confessed. Her parents were so angry at me. I worried that they wouldn’t forgive me.

  But like everything else along the way, we would weather this, too.

  FROM THE BEGINNING, having Liz there has always just made things better. A confidant. Someone to talk to who understood me. As I got older and particularly when I began traveling to work on film and TV projects, Liz would often come to stay for a while.

  When I went to shoot Children of a Lesser God in Saint John, New Brunswick, Liz came and stayed with me for about three weeks. When I would make the talk-show circuit for various projects, Liz often came along—she was there with me in the greenroom, in the audience. When I joined the cast of The L Word, she flew to Vancouver, where they film the series, to spend time with me.

  We’ve always been there for the important moments in each other’s life. She is a godmother to my children: I am a godmother to hers. I was maid, then matron, of honor at her weddings; she was the matron of honor at mine—and that was just two months after her second son, Luke, was born.

  When the doctor told Liz her first baby was about to deliver, she called me in L.A. and said, “Marlee, I’m having the baby tonight.” I packed and ran to the airport and got on a plane. Liz has the shortest, easiest deliveries of anyone, so by the time I got to the hospital Morris was eight hours old.

  I came a few days early when Luke was due; I didn’t want to miss it. She says, “Marlee was with me the whole week before. The night before Luke was born, I was exhausted, but there was such good, positive energy between us we decided to all go out to dinner to one of Marlee’s favorite places to eat, Bob Chinn’s Crab House. The next morning I knew it was time to go. So I hit the bed and said, ‘It’s time.’ Marlee ran downstairs and screamed for Mark, my husband. She called my parents to let them know. When we got to the hospital, Marlee grabbed a wheelchair for me. She was there with me all the way. And when Luke was born, Marlee was just filled with emotion, holding him and crying.”