I'll Scream Later (No Series) (27 page)

We had decided to sell the house in the hills and move to a quiet neighborhood outside L.A. where we could raise our kids away from the Hollywood scene. Though there was much to love about our house, it was expensive, and one Sunday when we were doing our loop walking Sarah, as we rounded the corner on Sunset Boulevard, we walked right into a hooker fighting with a john. It was 10 a.m. and Kevin said, “You’ve got to be kidding me. That’s it, I’m done.”

Besides, we had another baby on the way.

On Christmas Day I told Kevin I had seen a little blood and said we had to drive home from San Diego right away. On this solemn ride, we were quiet; there wasn’t much for either of us to say. I dropped Sarah off with Jack the next day, and Kevin and I went together to the doctor.

This was the one time in my life I didn’t want to be right. I was praying that I was wrong, that everything was going to be fine. It wasn’t. The doctor confirmed what I had feared.

The miscarriage hit us hard. It took about a year to mentally and emotionally recover. Then we faced a terrifying scare with Sarah.

She was about three and a half and was in child care during the day. On a Monday, she came home with a big bruise on her wrist. One of the kids at school had accidentally hit her with a plastic dinosaur. On Tuesday she came home with a few more bruises. On Wednesday she came home with even more. Now Kevin and I were alarmed.

We talked to the child-care center, and on Thursday an observer watched Sarah throughout the day, recording everything that happened to her, especially anything that could cause bruising. It was all ordinary stuff, such as at 8:35 Sarah bumped into the arts-and-crafts table. Everyone was mystified. By Thursday night, she also had some little red dots—they looked like tiny pinpricks—that were barely visible along the back of her neck.

On Friday, Kevin headed off to work with my worry level rising. I decided I had to get Sarah to a doctor. The doctor took one look at her and said, “Go get a blood test right now.” I got to the lab and it took five people to hold Sarah down, she was screaming bloody murder, so much I could see the veins bulging on her little neck. It was killing me.

The doctor said they’d call with the test results that night. The call came at 9 p.m. Sarah was asleep, I was lying down. Kevin, who was livid that I hadn’t told him about all this from the start, answered the phone.

He remembers: “The doctor said they had the results back from the lab and that they’d called ahead and the hospital had a bed waiting, she needed to go to the hospital now. ‘Right now?’ I asked. ‘Right now.’ It was a hospital we hadn’t heard of, but we got Sarah up and headed out. When we drove up, the first thing we saw was the sign:
CITY OF HOPE CANCER RESEARCH CENTER
.”

We went from worry to absolute terror. We got inside, and as soon as the doctor walked in, he began looking over the test results. I asked if it was leukemia. He said it wasn’t. He told us, “This is the kind of case I enjoy. At the end of the weekend she’ll be going home. And she’ll be fine.”

Sarah had a serious case of idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura, or ITP. Mild cases are not that uncommon in kids and usually clear up on their own. Essentially, as they explained it to us, Sarah’s platelet count was extremely low; her blood was so thin that if she broke the skin in a fall, her blood had no ability to clot. Also, internal bleeding that we wouldn’t be aware of until the situation had become life threatening was possible. All of it was compromising her body’s ability to fight off infections.

The doctor who treated Sarah was a visiting specialist from Oregon. Dr. James Miser, who was the hospital’s chief medical officer at the time, also got involved and was so filled with compassion and patience. He was great with kids. None of us will forget the Donald Duck puppet he used to explain what was going to happen—I’m not sure whom Donald reassured most, me and Kev, or Sarah.

Kevin and I took shifts staying with Sarah that weekend. He stayed the first night—I was so afraid something would happen and because of my deafness I might not understand, or the doctors and nurses might not understand me. I took the days, and we did that through the weekend.

Sarah quickly adjusted, and she still remembers clomping down the hospital corridors in a pair of princess high heels, pulling her IV behind her. Over the next year, we had to take her in for weekly, then monthly treatments until the platelet count was stabilized. I don’t think we have ever felt such anguish as we did going through that experience—and we were so lucky that ITP was so treatable and that Sarah is completely healthy today.

When Sarah was in kindergarten, she had a birthday party and asked all the kids to bring unwrapped gifts to donate to the City of Hope toy room. The hospital has a toy store, and each child patient gets to go in each day and pick out a toy. Sarah wanted to fill up that room. Sarah’s birthday netted about forty-five toys, and we had another fifty toys we took from our closet. Then we headed over one day to donate them.

Sarah wanted to give the toys herself to the children there. But hospital policy forbids a child who could have an infection so slight he or she might not even be aware of it to be around children whose immune systems are already so weak. But Sarah was adamant—she had to give at least one toy to one child.

The staff found a two-year-old who had Down syndrome who was being released the next day. Her name was Sarah. And so my Sarah, with a big, purple dancing Barney in hand, got to hand him off to another Sarah and see her smile and giggle with delight. It was one of the best days ever.

With Sarah healed and bouncing back, I was anxious to throw myself into work again. I needed a role that would really challenge me.

The role didn’t come overnight, but finally arrived courtesy of the brilliant Aaron Sorkin.

B
Y
N
OVEMBER OF
1998, I was already hooked on the new Aaron Sorkin series,
Sports Night.
It was so sharply written and so unexpected, and considering my love of sports, I had to watch this show.

But then he wrote an episode called “Dear Louise,” which aired on November 10.

In the episode, Jeremy, who was played by Josh Malina, is writing to his Deaf sister, Louise, a college sophomore. He’s telling her all about his new job at
Sports Night
and everything that’s been happening over the last few days.

“Dear Louise” was funny, poignant, and I dropped Aaron a note just to let him know how much I’d enjoyed it and appreciated the shout-out to the Deaf community. I wanted him to know we paid attention to that sort of thing, that even a simple gesture like that meant something.

That note soon led to a completely unexpected lunch at Mandarin in Beverley Hills. Aaron and I had such a good conversation and found that when it came to character and story and ideas, we thought about things in many of the same ways.

Sports Night
was canceled at the end of its second season in May of 2000, long before it should have been. But by then Aaron already had a new series on the air,
The West Wing.

Some TV series take time to build an audience, others just hit.
The West Wing
landed in prime time with gale-force winds. Critics loved it, the Washington power brokers became immediately addicted. Not only did it draw big audiences—it was consistently one of the top ten prime-time series in its early years—but its viewers
ranked among the best educated, the most affluent, the most influential.

When Aaron said he wanted to write me into an episode, I was thrilled.

On December 16, 1999, I got this fax: “This is your first scene. There’s obviously more to come. Aaron.”

It was enough. Five pages that rocked my world!

M
Y FIRST LINE
—
DELIVERED
to a hung over Josh Lyman, played by Bradley Whitford—was “Are you the unmitigated jackass who’s got the DNC choking off funding for O’Dwyer’s campaign in the California Seventh?”

Meet Joey Lucas, my character on
The West Wing.
She was high octane, feisty, and no-nonsense—I immediately liked her.

I also liked the way Aaron mixed things up, really capturing the way I communicate. Sometimes the dialogue was words I signed
and an interpreter translated, other times it was words I spoke, and still others it was words I signed that weren’t translated.

Working on
The West Wing
was one of the most difficult but rewarding jobs I’ve ever had. I loved Aaron Sorkin’s brilliant writing and having the chance to act opposite Bradley Whitford and a great cast. (Credit: Warner Bros./Getty Images)
.

Frankly that’s usually the way it is, and somehow Aaron managed to do it so that it rang true—the character’s voice sounded completely authentic.

Here’s one bit from the first scene that was just masterful in moving from one voice to another—the first is signed and translated, then I speak the italicized words:

Aaron constantly changed the rhythm and texture of my dialogue in that way and, as a result, built a real flesh-and-blood character that just happened to be Deaf.

When I showed up to shoot my episode, I was hit with waves of nausea. This time I knew exactly what was causing it—I was pregnant again.

I didn’t want to jeopardize this shot at
The West Wing,
and after the miscarriage I would take a long time before trusting that this pregnancy was real. So I tried to find discreet ways to not look green, and I fought my need to throw up as much as I could.

The West Wing
cast and crew were all terrific and were the hardest-working group I have ever seen in my life. The dialogue was complex and you never had enough time to feel that you absolutely had it, but you absolutely had to have it nailed.

One reason the show worked so well is that sense of reality Aaron gave to all the characters, not just mine, and the stories. For
the audience, it felt like a window into the real West Wing. When Aaron left the show, I felt a lot of the playful nature of my character left with him. I went from sharp-witted, tough, funny, possible love interest to smart lobbyist, period.

O
NCE
I
WAS
past the morning-sickness phase, I had a great pregnancy. I felt great and the show found a way to work around it since I was not a regular, but they kept asking me back and for that I was grateful.

One of the best times I had was in the spring of 2000 going as part of the cast to the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner. It’s one of the major events in Washington, with the White House press corps, politicians everywhere you turn, lots of politically active stars, and of course most of the time the president—all showing up at the Washington Hilton the last Saturday in April.

As Jack and I headed out from my hotel around six, the strap on my shoe broke. I was five and a half months pregnant and I couldn’t hobble along. I needed stability, and I had nothing else with me except a pair of tennis shoes, which didn’t really seem as if they would do. The hotel concierge said a Nine West was a few blocks away.

The clock was ticking because in about twenty minutes the streets would all be closed for the president’s motorcade. Thankfully our driver knew a shortcut that would get us within about a block of the store—but we’d have to walk that block.

So I’m in formal wear and sporting an already very pregnant belly, Jack’s in his tux, and we’re half running and half limping down the street toward Nine West—people must have thought we were crazy.

The store was packed—I walked in and felt as if I were at the back of a rock concert—all I could see were shoulders and heads.

Jack stepped in front of me and started pushing through, sounding very official as he announced, “Move aside, move aside, she’s seeing the president in twenty minutes and she needs a pair of pumps.” If I weren’t so panicked, I would have died with laughter on the spot.

But a saleswoman took us seriously and ran to the rescue, asking, “Are you the actress?”

“I don’t have time, I’m late to see President Clinton!”

Pregnant feet swell, so I had to buy two pairs of shoes—slipping a 6½ on one foot, a 7 on the other.

Suddenly other Deaf people were in the store. My worst nightmare. “Don’t sign, don’t sign,” I said under my breath to Jack. I had no time for casual conversation, and I knew from past experience that if I didn’t take time with a Deaf fan, I’d have the entire Deaf community up in arms again.

Finally, as the saleswoman rang up the bill, I said, “Yes, I’m the actress, and thank you so much!”

Outside again—no car to be seen. Jack started yelling the driver’s name: “Anthony? Anthony?” and running up and down the street.

People on the sidewalk kept stopping, asking if I was the actress in
Picket Fences.
I didn’t want to be rude, but I was in the middle of a crisis and didn’t have time to chat, sign autographs, shake hands. So to anyone that felt slighted that night, my sincerest apologies.

Suddenly Anthony drove around the corner and we hopped in. We had eight minutes to get to the Hilton before they closed the streets down. By the time we got near the hotel, traffic was at a standstill—the president had arrived, no one was moving anywhere.

Once again Jack and I hit the streets. Inside we were directed to the
US News & World Report
reception. It was packed with unfamiliar faces. I was rescued by a woman from
People
magazine, who whisked me off to the
People
party.

Inside I ran into John McCain, who remembered me from my day testifying to the Senate committee on behalf of closed-captioning, and he thanked me again for coming to Arizona a few years earlier to speak at a charity benefit that his wife had been involved in.

Heading into the banquet hall a bit later, I ran into Martin Sheen, who gave me a big hug.

“Come with me,” he said. “Let’s meet the president.”

With the Clintons at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner

We headed into the VIP party, but were stopped at the door. My name wasn’t on the list.

“But I’m the president.” Martin said, “and she’s my guest!”

That wasn’t enough. Even with Martin in my corner they weren’t going to let me in. The security guy at the door promised he’d check on my status and waved Martin on inside.

“Nothing doing,” he said. “I’m staying here until Marlee gets in.”

President Clinton might have been the main attraction, but everybody wanted Martin’s President Bartlet in the room, too. A woman came over to see what the problem was, and within minutes we were all inside.

Walking into that room, you could feel the power just radiating off people. Alan Greenspan and Andrea Mitchell. Madeleine Albright stopped me to say she was a fan. But wait—I was the fan. Then someone announced the president was on his way.

The door swung open and there stood the president and the first lady. I’d first met the Clintons in 1994 when President Clinton appointed me to the Corporation for National Service board of directors, which I had been so honored to be involved in.

I went over to speak to the first lady, who looked at my belly and said, “I see there’s a baby on the way.” We were smiling and Jack snapped a photo. Then I shook the president’s hand—another snapshot. He told me, “I have so much respect for you,” which always just makes me feel so humble that I’ve found myself in a position to hopefully make a difference along the way.

Then the cast of
The West Wing
gathered around the president—snap, snap, snap, more photos!

After the dinner everyone was off to another party. I got separated from the rest of the group and slipped into a quiet room that had a fireplace and a couch, where I could rest for a few minutes. It was so restful there, candles everywhere. A couple of attorneys came over to meet me, then suddenly one said to Jack. “You’re on fire!”

He was—literally—a spark from the fireplace had landed on his jacket. It was put out with little damage—although Jack was trailing
smoke for a while. As the parties were winding down, we walked out with Rob Lowe, Martin Sheen, and Aaron Sorkin. As late as it was, a crowd was waiting outside, cameras and autograph books ready. I expected the fans to scream for one or all of the guys, but a chant started rising:
“Blue’s Clues, Blue’s Clues.”

The guys looked confused, I looked shocked. We had walked into a crowd filled with mothers who recognized me from the popular kids show on which I occasionally made a guest appearance. Sometimes what touchs the fans are things you least expect.