Graceland

by Bethan Roberts

  He laughs. ‘You can’t just offer her the job. You gotta get references. We don’t want any old darkie coming in here, stealing Elvis’s stuff.’

  Although she barely knows her, Gladys says, ‘Alberta ain’t like that. And ain’t no call for references. We worked together.’

  Flies dip and buzz around their heads. Vernon says, ‘Then I guess I got to interview the woman.’

  ‘Don’t trouble yourself,’ says Gladys, breezily. ‘I can do it.’

  At three o’clock the following afternoon, Gladys opens the door to Alberta, who is wearing a long-sleeved blue dress, despite the heat, and a pair of black sliders. She is around Gladys’s age, but small, with thin wrists and a long neck, and she moves more slowly than she did before. She smiles briefly, but then her delicate features settle back into the carefully blank mask that Gladys now remembers.

  Showing Alberta into the living room, Gladys can smell the grease and coffee on her. She tells her to take a seat on the easy chair, next to the coffee table where she’s set a pitcher of iced tea in readiness.

  Pouring the drinks, Gladys spills a little on the pile of magazines Elvis has placed there. Many of them have his picture on the cover. But she ignores this and tries to remember what she should ask first. She must pretend, now, to be one of those folks who have questions to get through and papers to fill in. As the mother of a new movie star, she must pretend to be more than that, even – but how to begin?

  ‘Well,’ she says, wiping her damp palms on her dress.

  Alberta waits, her dark eyes focused on Gladys’s shoulder.

  ‘I don’t know what your wages are over Britling’s, Alberta, but we sure would like to offer you more, because I know you’re a mighty good cook.’

  ‘Thank you, ma’am.’

  ‘You’d be cooking for visitors, sometimes, because Elvis entertains a good deal, when he’s home.’

  ‘I ain’t no stranger to hard work, Miss Gladys.’

  ‘Oh, I know. But I’d cook Elvis’s meals for him. Ordinarily, I mean.’

  Alberta sips her tea and nods. Then she speaks slowly and deliberately. ‘So what I gotta do when Mr Elvis is home?’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure they’ll be heaps! Shopping and … cleaning and everything,’ says Gladys, with a wave of her hand.

  Alberta raises her eyebrows. On her face is a small smile, as if she’s amused by something. But it vanishes as quickly as it appeared. ‘Sounds just fine to me, ma’am.’

  ‘That’s settled, then!’ In her relief, Gladys gulps back the rest of her tea. Then she asks, ‘Are your folks doing good, Alberta?’

  ‘Oh yes, Miss Gladys. Real good, thank you. But not as good as yours!’

  Gladys nods. ‘We’ve been blessed.’

  ‘Amen,’ says Alberta, looking around. Gladys watches her take in the contents of the room: the walnut TV console, the brand new three-piece suite, the framed oil portrait of Elvis on the wall, the lamps on every available surface.

  ‘And how are you yourself, Miss Gladys?’ Alberta asks.

  Gladys glances down at her hands, taken aback by the question. Because they are so keen to know about Elvis, few people ask her how she is. Flesh bulges from beneath the edges of her diamond cocktail ring, and, sensing Alberta’s eyes following her own, she wishes she’d taken the thing off before inviting her into the house.

  ‘Oh,’ she says, sliding her hands beneath her thighs, ‘I’m just fine, thank you. Just fine.’

  She is about to show Alberta out, having taken her on a brief tour of the house, when Vernon arrives home.

  From the flush on his cheeks, Gladys guesses he’s spent the afternoon in a bar, telling strangers that yes, he really is the daddy of Elvis Presley, and yes, it’s true that right now he’s shooting his first-ever movie out in Hollywood. Seeing Alberta, he pauses in the hallway. Clutched to his chest is a copy of Life magazine.

  ‘Well, looky here,’ he says. ‘This our new maid?’

  ‘This here’s Alberta,’ says Gladys. ‘She’s starting as our housekeeper next week.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’ Without smiling, Vernon looks Alberta over, taking his time. ‘Ain’t that just fine?’ he says.

  Alberta keeps her eyes on Gladys’s shoes.

  ‘We’re real happy about it, ain’t we, Alberta?’ says Gladys.

  ‘Yes, Miss Gladys.’

  Vernon grins and winks at his wife.

  ‘We’ll be seeing you Monday, then, Alberta,’ says Gladys, moving towards the door.

  Vernon blocks the women’s path. ‘You know,’ he says, addressing Alberta, ‘some folks back in my home town used to call me a no-good jellybean. But here I am, in my ranch-style house, with a swimming pool and a housekeeper! How do you like that?’

  Alberta is still staring at Gladys’s feet.

  ‘I said, how do you like that?’

  ‘It’s just swell, Mr Vernon,’ says Alberta, raising her eyes to his chest.

  ‘You bet! But have you seen this here magazine?’

  He thrusts his copy of Life into her face. His eyes are wide, and even Gladys can smell the liquor on him.

  ‘Vernon,’ Gladys warns. ‘Alberta’s gotta be getting along now.’

  ‘It’s got a story about my son’s rise to fame and fortune, but do you know what they say about him in here?’ He taps the cover.

  Now Gladys looks at the magazine. Elvis’s face is not on the front, but she can see his name. After all the fuss following her son’s appearance on Milton Berle, she knows better than to expect everything written about him to be praising. He’s been accused of causing the young women of America to lose their morals, teenagers to riot and the races to mix. He’s been called obscene, and compared to an animal. Some of it has had her and Elvis weeping together.

  ‘Some low-down preacher from Jacksonville has denounced Elvis in church!’ says Vernon, clutching wildly at the pages, trying to find the story. ‘Now, do you call that fair, Alberta? Elvis is a God-fearing boy who likes to sing a few songs, and this damned preacher has the gall to pray for his soul!’

  Gladys tries to snatch the magazine from her husband. ‘Who did such a thing?’ she demands.

  Vernon holds the magazine out of her reach. ‘I don’t want you to see it, Glad. I’m gonna destroy this thing,’ he says, ‘and then I’m gonna dance on it!’ And with one swipe, he wrenches off the cover.

  Alberta stands back, seemingly ready to witness the show. Gladys pushes past her husband and opens the front door.

  ‘Well, so long, Alberta,’ she sings. ‘Thanks for coming over!’

  Reluctantly, Alberta picks her way past Vernon, who has started pulling the magazine to bits. She inches out of the house, murmuring goodbye. Gladys catches her eye and, to her relief, no longer sees any amusement there.

  Having firmly shut the door, Gladys turns to watch her husband, who is tearing through the magazine, sending staples pinging off every which way. He rips a page of photographs to shreds. She sees the words ‘fads’, ‘fears’ and ‘antics’ before they are destroyed. With his heel, Vernon grinds the paper into the carpet. Then he stomps on it.

  ‘You finished?’ she asks.

  ‘Nope.’

  Lifting his arms, he begins to sing. ‘I got a new place to dwell, right at the top of dollar street, in cheque-book motel!’ He grabs at an imaginary microphone and runs one hand through his hair, mimicking his son with expert precision.

  ‘I been so loaded, baby, I’m-a so loaded, I could die!’ His voice is good, as it always was. Vernon drops to his knees and looks at her with beseeching eyes. All around him, the shreds of the story flutter in his wake.

  Gladys shakes her head, but can’t help a smile.

  ‘Get up offa your knees,’ she says, gently. ‘We got us a maid, now. We can’t act like fools no more.’

  * * *

  Even at nine o’clock in the evening, with the September sun almost setting, it’s hot. Elvis bobs in his swimming pool, waiting for the girls. Gloria, Heidi and Frances, all fourteen
years old, all sweet, all crazy, have been coming over since he returned from Hollywood. His new buddy Cliff, a disc jockey from Jackson who has stepped in for Red, is picking them up for their first pool-and-pyjama party. Vernon and the Colonel told Red after he hit the guy at the Fairgrounds that he was no longer welcome, and Red announced his intention to join the marines. Maybe it’s for the best. Cliff is less likely than Red to throw punches around, and he’s also better with girls. He knows how to talk to the parents. He sings a little, but with a mouth like a train running at full speed, he’s unlikely to steal their hearts.

  The pool shimmers orange and yellow. Elvis pushes his fingers back and forth, making the colours bleed, feeling the resistance of the water, telling himself that it’s good to have these moments of ease, when he can watch the sunset and feel the water on his skin. He can hardly believe he’s spent the last month shooting a movie. During that time, he barely saw the sky. Was any of that real? He’s learning, he thinks, how to get through the days even though the days seem like a dream. He’s worked out that it’s best to think only of what is happening right now. Otherwise there’s too much information in your brain. On set, he tried not to think about being a movie star, or how the picture would turn out, or the fact that he was sitting next to the celebrated and virtuous beauty Debra Paget (Debra fucking Paget!) but of what his next line was. Kissing Debra had been delicious, and she had responded to him, he just knew it, not a movie response but a real, female response – she even complimented him on his technique. He knows he’s good at this stuff; he’s tender, starts softly and works his way in. He learned a lot with Dixie and has been practising ever since.

  He closes his eyes and submerges himself completely. Mr Webb always said the same thing. ‘That was very good, Elvis. Now, let’s try it again …’ So he never knew what the director really thought, and, in the end, was glad he didn’t. But Mr Webb had seemed impressed with Elvis’s theory about the great screen actors – Brando, Dean, Clift. Had Mr Webb noticed that they never smiled? He’d made a study of them all, and they hardly ever looked happy. He didn’t mention that he’d spent many hours perfecting his own scowl in the mirror, or that he’d learned it, initially, from his granddaddy, JD. But even the long-perfected scowl hadn’t looked right when he’d watched the rough cut. Seeing himself up there, his face as big as a truck, made him want to hide in his mama’s lap. He looked like a big goofy hick. And why did they have him singing? If it was a serious project, as the Colonel tried to assure Elvis it was, it was unnatural to burst into song in the middle of the picture. It had felt strange, anyhow, without Scotty and Bill behind him. Mr Webb had decided they weren’t hillbilly enough for the movie, which they found funny – at least for a moment.

  He’ll be laughed out of Hollywood. He knows it.

  ‘Elvis?’

  He comes up for air and there’s his mother, standing at the side of the pool, frowning.

  ‘You all right, son?’

  ‘I’m fine, Mama.’

  ‘You were under an awful long time.’

  ‘Everything’s fine. Why wouldn’t it be?’

  And he goes under again, so she has to wait, her body casting a shadow across the water. That shadow has grown larger over the summer, despite her diet pills. They’d worked, at first. He’d seen her pleasure at being able to buy new dresses with the money he gave her. One day she’d come home in a loud polka-dot blouse and skirt, declaring, ‘If Mrs King could see me now!’ Vernon had even obliged her with a soft wolf whistle, and she’d slapped him across the head, overjoyed.

  There’s a muffled sound above, but he won’t come up. Not yet.

  The best thing about her diet pills, though, is that it’s easy for him to steal them. The first time he’d tried one, it was like he’d been plugged into the grid, despite the few hours’ sleep he’d had. He could sail right through the day without getting bothered about one little thing. His brain seemed one step ahead of his body and of everybody else, too, which was useful on the movie set.

  ‘Son!’

  Hearing the warning in her voice, even through the water, he emerges.

  ‘The girls are here. You want me to tell them to come on out?’

  ‘Have they brought their bathing suits along?’

  ‘I guess.’

  ‘Then tell them to get changed quick and get in this pool. It’ll be dark soon.’

  ‘All right.’ But she doesn’t move. ‘Elvie?’

  ‘Yes, Mama?’

  ‘I like Frances best, don’t you?’

  She keeps her gaze on the walnut trees at the back of their property.

  Gloria came to Audubon first, because her daddy has fixed the Presley automobiles for as long as they’ve been in Memphis, and Vernon owed him a favour. But Frances is the reason Gloria has been invited back. Gloria had brought her two friends along at Elvis’s suggestion, and he’d recognised Frances straight away. She was the pretty one he’d noticed at the gate on his way back from New York earlier in the summer.

  ‘I like her, Mama.’

  ‘She told me she can sew and cook, both.’

  ‘She’s only fourteen.’

  ‘By the time you’re ready for marriage, Frances will be a good age.’

  Elvis laughs, but the thought has crossed his mind, too.

  ‘Are you about done now?’ he asks.

  ‘I’ll be done when I see you happy,’ she says.

  ‘I am happy, Mama. I’m a movie star with a million-dollar future. I’m Elvis Presley. You must be the only person for miles around who don’t know that.’

  She crouches down and reaches out to stroke his hair. ‘You know what I mean, Elvie,’ she says, softly. ‘Mama’s worried about her baby.’

  He kisses her fingers and says, ‘Go tell them little girls to hurry along.’

  As she walks away, he notices that she is too upright and deliberate in her steps to be entirely sober.

  The red ruffles on Gloria’s bathing suit make her look like a lapdog gussied up for a show. She’s already laughing. Gloria is always letting out a high-pitched, uneven laugh, often at nothing. When Elvis imitates it, she does it even more. She has the hair of a poodle – black and fiercely curly. The others are dressed in strictly practical bathing suits – navy blue for Frances, black for Heidi. Frances’s calves are exquisitely curved, like expensive pieces of furniture. Heidi is the tallest, and has the most developed breasts, but also the most serious-looking mouth. She is in charge.

  They stand in a tight clump on the flagstones at the other end of the pool, gawping at him.

  Elvis keeps his body beneath the water. ‘Hi, girls!’ He waves. ‘Come on in! The water’s real fine.’

  Without taking their eyes from him, they whisper to one another behind their hands.

  ‘Y’all ain’t afraid of Elvis, are you?’

  ‘Frances says she ain’t coming in,’ says Heidi.

  ‘Then why in the world is she wearing that bathing suit?’

  ‘She can’t swim.’

  Frances stares at her feet.

  Gloria runs along the flags, yelling, ‘Here I come!’ then she jumps into the water, making a splash large enough to soak his head. She comes up laughing, almost nose to nose with him. His hair drips in his eyes but he does not wipe the water away. There’s a pause. ‘Hi, Gloria,’ he says, keeping his voice soft and low.

  ‘Hi, Elvis.’

  ‘Hi, Gloria.’

  ‘Hi, Elvis.’

  ‘Hi, Gloria.’

  ‘Hi, Elvis,’ she giggles, a little uncertain.

  ‘Wanna have some fun?’

  ‘Well, sure.’

  He puts a hand on her wet curls and pushes her down. Holding her beneath the water, he turns to Frances and says, ‘Don’t sweat it, honey. I can’t swim, either.’

  Gloria kicks and wriggles. For a young girl, she is strong. He lets her come back up, wet curls streaked across her face like a mess of turnip greens. She gasps for breath. ‘Oh!’ she shouts. ‘Oh! You!’

&nb
sp; ‘Me?’

  ‘You!’

  She’s splashing him with all her might, but he ignores her. ‘Frances, Heidi, get yourselves in this pool, or Gloria here’s going under again!’ He reaches for Gloria’s head, but she dodges away, shrieking.

  He smiles to himself at the thought of his daddy’s irritation at the noise. Vernon is in the den, watching TV with Cliff. He’s probably turning up the volume right now. He’s warned Elvis about the neighbours’ complaints, too. The residents of Audubon Drive have written a letter, which Vernon read aloud to his son when Gladys was out shopping.

  We hope you’ll understand our alarm at the disruption caused not only by the volume of the music coming from 1034, but also by the multiple vehicles arriving and departing from your property at all times of day, not to mention the frankly riotous presence of hundreds of teenage girls on the street, many of whom seem to think nothing of stealing blades of grass and other ‘souvenirs’ not only from your garden but also from ours! Mr Presley Junior appears to keep irregular hours, which is obviously his business, but it becomes our business when it keeps us awake nights. We may be forced to make this a police matter if something cannot be worked out—

  What they don’t yet know, and what he means to tell them, is that he’s discovered he’s the only one in the street who owns his property outright. If they want him out, let them buy him out.

  Frances and Heidi are climbing in gingerly. While they pick their way across the pool, at pains not to get their hair wet, Elvis says to the bedraggled Gloria, ‘I’m sorry, honey, but you looked like you needed a good ducking.’

  All three squeal as he chases them, lunging for their arms and legs, not knowing which limb belongs to which girl. As he ploughs through the pool, he glances up at the house and sees his mother, watching from the kitchen window. What’s strange is that she is looking not at him but at the darkening sky.