When it came time to tape the television special, an incredible group of talents honored us by performing our song: Celine Dion, Enrique Iglesias, Josh Groban, and Nick Carter. It was thrilling to hear their remarkable voices harmonizing together on my words, and I felt grateful that I’d received such a profound opportunity to give back.
Remarkably, we were nominated for an Emmy for “Best Original Song” for our collaboration, and we won. As I was well aware from my years in television, there are actually two Emmy ceremonies. The technical awards are given out the first weekend, and then the big stars come out for the televised, Primetime Emmys ceremony, held the second weekend. Because ours was a songwriting honor, which was considered one of the technical categories, we received our award at the first ceremony. Of course, it was an incredible sensation to be honored, after a few nominations over the years, and for a song so close to my heart. Holding my statuette in my hand with my longtime partner beside me was a wonderful moment during which I was able to pause, and breathe, and appreciate all that I’d accomplished in the past twenty years.
But the fun was far from over yet. The following weekend, we were invited to several parties following the Primetime Emmys, so we sheepishly decided to bring our Emmys from home, even though they’d already been in our possession for a week.
“That’s our calling card,” we joked, indicating the Emmys in our hands as we gained access to the exclusive parties and celebrated our victory with the other winners. Hey, an Emmy’s an Emmy, no matter when you win it.
It wasn’t all a bed of roses. Yes, we were thriving professionally. But something had happened between us a few years earlier that always remained in the back of my mind. We’d been hosting one of our many charity events at our home, this time to raise money to fund the Malibu Boys and Girls Club, which we’d founded, along with our friends Mel Gibson, his then wife, Robyn, and Danny Stern and his wife, Laure Mattos. Our property included an approximately six-acre lawn, which we tented in order to host hundreds of people while they enjoyed stellar entertainment and Jay Leno as the emcee. David was rehearsing on our lawn, leading up to the huge show. My brother, Sam, Louise, Jennifer, and Amy were all in town to participate. At the same, I was driving them down Pacific Coast Highway, I nonchalantly looked up into the rearview mirror and saw an extended-cab, long-bed pickup truck barreling toward us. All I had time to say was “Oh my God!”
The truck rear-ended us, knocking our SUV a hundred feet forward, into the car in front of me, and that car into the one in front of him. It ended up being a five-car pileup on the highway and several people were hurt. The Suburban I was driving was disabled, and we were all to go to the hospital to get checked out for concussions and other injuries. My first phone call was, of course, to David.
I was standing in the middle of the highway with emergency vehicles all around, including fire trucks, paramedics, police, and an ambulance.
“David, we’ve just been in an accident on Pacific Coast Highway and we have to go to the hospital,” I said. “It was a five-car collision.”
“Well, what do you want me to do about it?” David replied.
I stood there on the highway, in the heat, with my head throbbing, in shock, thinking about the night earlier in our relationship when David had called me around 4 a.m., hysterical. He told me that he’d struck the actor Ben Vereen, who’d been disoriented by an earlier car accident and was in the middle of the Pacific Coast Highway. I jumped out of bed, rushed to David’s side, and dealt with the paramedics and police officers at the scene. When David was bereft following the accident, I’d traded in the vehicle he’d been driving at the time and used my own separate money to buy him a new Suburban. Yet another time, when a landslide had hit David’s car, and he had called me in a panic, I’d again rushed to his side to care for him and comfort him. That’s not heroic. That’s nothing more than even a friend should do for another friend. And it’s certainly something that any husband or wife should have the right to expect of the other. And yet, when I’d had my accident, David had snapped at me.
What kind of response is that from the person who is my “first phone call” in my moment of need?
I was stunned.
“I’m in the middle of rehearsals,” David continued. “I’ll just send Kofi.” Kofi was a young man from Ghana who was my “nanny” for Brandon and Brody for many years. I’d hired him years earlier when I was working in Nashville on Hee Haw. I’d met him while he was working as a waiter in a restaurant there.
“Well, David, the Suburban is disabled,” I said. “We have to go to the hospital and will need a ride home.”
“I told you I’ll just send Kofi,” he said.
No other incident was more telling of the disparate dysfunction in our relationship. David’s blatant disregard for me made me feel very much alone; I could not count on David to truly be there for me. Of course, he later apologized—and I know he was genuinely sorry—but irreparable damage had been done to my psyche and to the very foundational fiber of our marriage.
When a violation of intrinsic trust like that occurs, resentment and bitterness build up. As a result, I became more and more withdrawn, defensive, and protective of my heart. I became less than I wanted and needed to be in our marriage, and I’m pretty certain less than David wanted and needed as well. As a romantic, one who writes lyrically about love, hope, and promise, I was feeling cheated out of being all that I had the capability of being in a loving relationship, because I didn’t feel I could entrust my whole heart to David for safekeeping. That accident and David’s callous response were the beginning of the end of our marriage.
Chapter Twenty-three
Party of One
While David and I had more than a few rocky moments in these years, we continued to form a unified front when it came to our career, and we still enjoyed entertaining at Villa Casablanca. In 2002 we held a dinner party that included a very special guest, Lisa Marie, and her new love, actor Nicolas Cage.
Several years earlier, in the early spring of 1994, I had actually reunited with Lisa Marie when David began working with Michael Jackson, who had asked him to produce a song for his upcoming album. Michael was the King of Pop, a consummate musical talent and major artistic force, and to collaborate on a song with him was a huge honor and testament to David’s ascendant reputation as a producer.
Michael had flown a group of us to New York City, including David and me, Brandon and Brody, David’s daughters, and my niece Amy, who helped us out as a babysitter. Once there, Michael very generously put our large family group up in a beautiful suite at the Plaza. On our first day in the city, Michael invited us all to visit his office, which showed off his boyish, playful side with its abundant Mickey Mouse paraphernalia. But when we arrived, I got a surprise: Lisa Marie was there with Michael.
Of course, I was overjoyed to see her. We hugged and eagerly began catching up. There was an obvious intimacy and affection between Michael and Lisa, and they seemed to really enjoy each other’s company. As far as I knew, they were just dating, but it was soon revealed they had gone down to the Dominican Republic and gotten married in secret. Lisa appeared quite happy, and so I was happy for her.
We all had a memorably fun time on that trip, and I felt like I’d stumbled into yet another incarnation of the extended family of my heart. It meant so much for me to give my sons an opportunity to spend time with the first child I had enjoyed caring for and loving, all those many years ago.
During one of our days together in the city, Brandon, who was about twelve at the time, was wearing a pair of blue khakis.
“I like those pants you’re wearing,” Michael said to Brandon.
“You can borrow them,” Brandon joked.
“Okay, I’ll wear those tonight,” Michael said. “Let’s go to the movies.”
Michael generously rented a van to take us to the movies together that evening. When we arrived at Trump Tower, where Michael was renting a suite on the sixty-fourth floor, Michael and Li
sa greeted us warmly. As promised, Brandon loaned Michael the pants he’d been wearing that day and changed into another pair we’d brought along. It was just a quirky, odd thing, one of the ways in which Michael displayed much the same winsome playfulness of a child. Now might be a good time to let it be known that Michael acted in a completely appropriate manner with all of our kids.
Michael put on one of those little scarves across his nose and mouth, appearing like a robber. He often wore masks to conceal his identity in public during that time. He was still easily recognizable as Michael Jackson, but we were able to have a nice time at the movies without being mobbed by his fans. He was soft-spoken and shy but also sweet and fun. Lisa was vibrant and full of personality, as she’d always been. They held hands, and it was easy to see that they were close and shared a warm chemistry. Watching her, a beautiful, grown-up mother of two who was in love with one of the greatest entertainers of our day, brought me back to our time together with her daddy. I looked at my own two children and marveled at how far we had all come.
I truly felt for Lisa when her marriage to Michael dissolved. I knew firsthand how it was possible to love a person very much and yet no longer be able to accept the way of life that goes along with being with him. I believe she truly loved Michael and she was involved in their relationship for all the right reasons. In fact, I don’t believe Lisa ever really did anything that went against her heart. But I do think that their love story was more complicated than your average straightforward union. Maybe Michael represented an enigma similar to the one her father presented to her—the King of Rock and the King of Pop. In many ways, Michael was the only artist who has ever really come close to Elvis on so many levels.
After this reunion with Lisa in 1994, she and I had managed to stay in touch. The next time I saw her, a few years later, she and Michael had already divorced, but we reminisced pleasantly about those days we’d spent together in New York. Over the next several years, we’d both attended parties at each other’s homes. I’d been to a Christmas celebration at Lisa’s Hidden Hills property, which she’d decorated beautifully, much as her daddy used to decorate Graceland, warming my heart at the way his traditions lived on through the next generation. (As a side note, Kim Kardashian and Kanye West now own that home, revealing the myriad, unexpected ways—small and large, monumental and inconsequential—in which our lives connect with others’.)
When I invited Lisa to dinner at Villa Casablanca in 2002, she’d wanted me to meet her new love and share my impressions of him with her. Even if she hadn’t asked me to assume that role, I would have quietly taken it on myself. I still felt protective of Lisa in that special way of adults who have once loved and cared for someone as a child, and I wanted to get to know Nicolas. And so I worked out the seating arrangement so we flanked him at dinner, with Lisa and me sitting on either side of him.
I had long admired Nicolas’s acting talent, and I’d been particularly amused by his brilliant Saturday Night Live skit, “Tiny Elvis.” As we sat together at dinner, I took the opportunity to compliment him as one who’d spent a great deal of time with Elvis and happened to think Nicolas had managed a quite good rendering of the King.
“I loved your bit on Elvis,” I said to Nicolas.
“What bit on Elvis?” Lisa Marie asked.
It dawned on me that she didn’t seem to realize what a huge Elvis fan Nicolas was.
“Haven’t you ever seen that?” I asked.
“No,” she said, fixing Nicolas with that unmistakable Presley gaze.
Nicolas squirmed a little, looking slightly uncomfortable.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said. “Tiny Elvis! Oh my God. It’s brilliant. He’s shrunk into this little minuscule Elvis, and he’s got the suit on, and he’s got the nuance down, and the whole thing. He’ll sit next to a lamp and say, ‘Hey, Sonny, Red, look how big that lamp is, man. That’s huge, that’s all I’m saying man, it’s just huge.’ ”
I couldn’t help but laugh as I recounted the skit.
“You did that?” Lisa asked Nicolas, not sounding entirely sure if she was pleased to find her daddy’s shadow seemingly everywhere in her world, even her love life.
“Yeah, it was a character on Saturday Night Live,” Nicolas said, trying to downplay any significance the skit might have had for him, or might have for them in their shared life.
The awkward moment passed, and we all enjoyed ourselves and laughed a great deal over dinner. Nicolas proved to be an incredibly nice guy. And Lisa revealed herself to be the same darling, charismatic force she’d always been and very much her father’s daughter. She had a mouth like Elvis, and I don’t just mean her physical resemblance to him, either. I mean she swore a lot. At one point in one of her expletive-peppered narrations, Nicolas looked at me, eyebrow raised.
“Has she always been like this?” he asked. “Does she always talk like this?”
“Her daddy was worse,” I said, laughing. “She gets it very honestly.”
Lisa and I saw each other more frequently for a few years after that.
It wasn’t just having Lisa Marie back in my life for a time that had brought her daddy so much to mind around then. As difficult as it was for me to believe, August 16, 2002, was the twenty-fifth anniversary of Elvis’s passing. During the intervening years, I had been offered many opportunities to tell the story of my time with Elvis, including some book deals that would have come with substantial payment. But I’d always demurred, being turned off by the idea of capitalizing on my relationship with Elvis, or exploiting his memory in any way. I was always protective of Elvis’s tender foibles, unlike some of the unsavory characters who professed to know him well and who had exploited his memory since his untimely death. And I’d been determined that any recounting of my life, when it finally happened, was going to contain my own accomplishments, and not just details of my time as Elvis’s girlfriend.
Now it had been twenty-five years, and I had gone on to have other relationships and my own triumphs of a personal and professional nature. And, even more important, I felt like I was beginning to have the necessary perspective to speak with greater temperance and compassion than I might have before. Leading up to the anniversary, CNN talk show host Larry King called me at home.
“I’m doing a program for the twenty-fifth anniversary of Elvis’s death, and I want you to do the entire show,” he said. “We’re friends, and you should know that I’ll treat you with the utmost respect. I just think you’re the person that knew him best.”
I did consider Larry a friend, and I admired him and his show. The way he presented his case, it was hard to say no. Okay, if I’m going to do it, I want to do it well, I thought. Here’s an opportunity to say some loving things about Elvis to honor his memory, and give a little more insight into who he was for his legions of fans.
When I told David about Larry requesting an interview from me, he absolutely did not want me to do Larry’s show; I had suspected he wouldn’t. My decision to go ahead and be interviewed without his blessing created a sizable rift between David and me. Years earlier, I might have succumbed to his pressure, if for no other reason than to keep the peace. But I was also growing exhausted from his attempts to control what was an integral part of me and my personal history, and I couldn’t allow that to happen here. I wasn’t about to follow his unfair dictates anymore when it came to a decision that should have been mine alone to make.
Larry interviewed me for a full hour, and while I didn’t find anything inappropriate or distasteful about his questions, he did ask me about losing my virginity to Elvis. Mind you, it had happened a long time ago, so it wasn’t like the anecdote was emotionally charged for me anymore. And by the early 2000s, social mores had loosened to the point where a little polite conversation of a slightly sexual nature between two adults was hardly shocking. Of course, David and I had both grown up a little more cloistered than what might have been the cultural average at the time. And he did have that jealous nature that was particula
rly triggered by any and all references to Elvis. Needless to say, he was furious. But I did not believe I had anything to apologize for, and as long as our conflict on the subject was relegated to our private lives, I was not terribly upset by his reaction.
That is, until we were at a party at the home of our dear friends the Davises. This was one of their lovely, sophisticated dinner parties attended by some of the top tastemakers in business and entertainment. We happened to be enjoying the cocktail hour before dinner, with everyone dressed in fine eveningwear, making civilized conversation.
Larry King approached David and me with his wife, Shawn.
“Linda, you were one of the best interviews I’ve ever had,” he said. “You were awesome. David, did you watch the interview? She was incredible.”
“Fuck you,” David said.
“What?” Larry said.
“How would you like me to ask you about all the women you’ve been with in front of your wife here? I didn’t want to watch it. I can’t believe you asked my wife about a man that she was with before me.”
It was so shockingly inappropriate that we all stood there for a beat in silence. Larry was just stupified and clearly needed a moment to recover.
“I think you’ve just insulted me,” Larry finally managed to say to David.
Just then, Barbara Davis swooped in, ever the perfect hostess.
“Larry, there’s someone over here I’d like you to meet,” she said, pulling him away. That incident represented David at his most unfiltered. Sometimes his lack of tact was shocking, as in this instance. But just as many, probably more times, his extreme candor was highly amusing and very endearing. But not this time.
I was very embarrassed, but I was not going to crack in front of our friends and the night’s other guests, not when Barbara had gone to all the trouble to put together such a delightful evening. I held my head high, a big smile on my face, until the tension faded. Of course, David and Larry have seen each other many times since then and fully reconciled. It was just one of those moments everyone was anxious to forget and move on from.
A Little Thing Called Life Page 37
