The Colonel says half of Tinseltown will show up. Hal Wallis. Debra Paget. Nick Adams. Carol Channing. Sammy Davis. Tommy Sands. Vince Edwards. As usual, the critics have panned Elvis’s new movie, Jailhouse Rock, calling his acting effort ‘grotesque’. Tonight he means to show Hollywood what he’s really made of.
He’s applied his own make-up, having perfected his technique with guidance from the artist at Paramount, and sculpted his hair. Cliff and Lamar ought to be back from the Pepsi machine by now. Elvis stares at the dimples in the cinderblock wall, trying to control his breathing. It’s always like this before a show, no matter how well the last one went. In fact, he thinks that maybe it gets worse, every time. Every time he fears he will have no voice at all out there; that his body will betray him by collapsing; that his mind will go blank and he’ll become a limp, empty ghost, like Noreen after Preacher Brown rid her of her demon. He swallows a couple of Dexedrine before pointing at himself in the mirror and clearing his throat. ‘My name is FEAR!’ he says, with as much menace as he can muster. ‘People tremble and shake when I am near!’
Finally, unable to sit any longer, he knocks on the band’s door. Although they’ve officially resigned, Scotty and Bill have agreed to play on this short tour for a flat fee. So far, they’ve stayed in their hotel room at the Knickerbocker (Elvis is in the plusher Beverly Wilshire) and have done their work without saying a word about their resignation letter.
Scotty opens the door, but doesn’t invite Elvis in.
‘Everything OK for tonight?’ asks Elvis, leaning on the door frame, tapping his foot. The jacket is already scratching at his wrists.
‘Yep.’
Elvis can see Bill sitting behind Scotty. When their eyes meet in the dressing-table mirror, Elvis tries a grin, but Bill says nothing.
‘Was there anything else?’ asks Scotty. His wide face remains smooth, the ironic smile still in place.
‘Just, you know, I’m real glad you fellas are gonna be out there with me.’
Elvis offers his hand for a shake. Scotty considers it for a moment, then pumps it up and down, firmly.
‘And,’ says Elvis, ‘as Sam would say, don’t make that guitar too damn complicated!’
Scotty smooths his hair. ‘It ain’t complicated,’ he says. ‘We just follow your ass.’
“Love Me!” he commands.
There are over nine thousand people in the auditorium, and it seems that they are all screaming. As he sings, he pulls the gold jacket from one shoulder and shimmies towards the audience, then circles his hips slowly, going up onto the balls of his feet to bump his groin towards the mike. The girls in the front rows are out of their seats, but that’s not enough for Elvis. He wants the whole of Hollywood on its feet. He wants Carol Channing and Debra Paget to grip their own flesh and scream the hell out of their lungs. He wants Hal Wallis to split his britches, begging for more. He wants Nick Adams to bark like a dog.
He turns to check on Scotty, who returns his grin. Bill does likewise. Perhaps they don’t hate him, after all. He shrugs and winks at the audience, who roar and whistle back.
He clasps the microphone in both hands as if it’s a woman, hooking a leg around its body, touching the mesh of the mike with his lips. The New York songwriters, Jerry and Mike, told him they wrote this one as a kind of joke, but tonight Elvis can see nothing funny about it.
Bending at the knees, he pulls the mike stand between his legs, running the metal against his thigh. The crowd rise as one, and their noise billows up to the wooden rafters and down to the concrete floor. Then he sees a flash of red hair, and his already inflated heart rises to his throat. He blinks and stumbles on the lyric about begging and stealing, because this girl’s hair springs from her head like flames and for one second he’s convinced that it’s Noreen. The girl makes her hands into fists and brings them to her face and bellows his name, and it seems that maybe he’s undone whatever it was the preacher did all those years ago. He’s told Anita that being onstage is like making love, but now he realises it’s better than that, because it’s not one girl but nine thousand, and he’s setting the whole lot of them loose. When he looks again at the crowd, he sees them all: Noreen, Magdalene, Betty, Dixie, Barbara, Dottie, Anita, and he feels he has enough for everybody. If he can give them this song, they’ll love him for ever. He’s sure of it.
He promises the audience that if they ever go, he’ll be oh, so lonely, and then he’s on his knees, reaching out to them. They return the gesture.
To finish, he introduces ‘The Elvis Presley National Anthem: “Hound Dog”’. On the side of the stage, as always, is his record company’s mascot, a three-feet-high plaster dog called Nipper. Halfway through the song, Elvis starts singing to the dog, but not in the way he sang to that basset hound on The Steve Allen Show. Instead, he slides to his knees and takes it by the neck, then rolls on his back with the dog in his arms, still singing. From the corner of his eye, he can see Scotty and Bill glancing at one another nervously. On the final slowed-down verse, Elvis rolls over, taking the dog with him. With one leg slung across its back, he grinds himself against the creature. He sings the chorus as slowly and as wildly as he can, scattering sweat and gold leaf across the stage. He sings it again and again and again, slower each time, clasping the dog to his zipper as he howls the words. Each time he sings it, the uncertain, disbelieving, thrilled pause in the crowd’s whooping becomes longer. When he’s finally through, he lets the song’s last words come out of his mouth in a laughing rush, releases the dog, and lies with his arms and legs spread out on the stage.
When he looks up at the lights, he half-expects them to explode, along with the audience.
Memphis, August 1958
Since making the journey back from Killeen to see Dr Evans, Gladys has been in hospital for three days, and each morning she looks forward to sleep.
It’s nine-thirty a.m., and the nurse has just given her the medication that will alleviate the pain in her stomach, enabling her to drift off. When Gladys does sleep at night, she is visited by Jesse, who slips into her dreams to ask where she is, and when she’s going to come fetch him. Last night, when she woke at three a.m. with that old feeling of terrible lightness in her chest and pain so bad it made her moan, she’d groped around the bed for the child she’d lost, and it wasn’t Elvis’s name she called out, but Jesse’s. Then she’d prayed. Jesse, she whispered. Son. Forgive me. I told your brother he had your strength. What else could I say? I didn’t want him to go through life blaming himself for your death. Or blaming God. Or me.
Jesse never makes his presence felt during the day, so now she can safely allow herself to slide into drowsiness. She places her arms outside the thick white sheet and watches the huge window. It’s double-glazed and renders the room absolutely silent, save for the low whirr of the air conditioning. The bright clouds scud past. Closing her eyes, she feels warmth on her lids, and her limbs begin to soften. She thinks of her mother, who’d spent months and months dying. With her body lightened by the drug, Gladys tells herself that this is all too sudden to be her own end. Vernon keeps saying that Elvis will come and she’ll soon be up on her feet. Deep down, though, she knows she will never be well again. Because if she ever gets out of this room the first thing she will do is take a drink. Nothing fancy. Just a long, cool beer. It will be the best she’s ever tasted.
She longs for Elvis to appear, though, not only for the comfort his voice and body always bring, but also so he can witness her bravery in smiling through the sickness. And she’d like him to appreciate her refusal to die until he’s arrived.
Then her husband comes in, bringing with him outdoor smells of exhaust fumes, hair pomade and coffee.
He’s fetched her baby-blue bed jacket from home, and is sitting on the mattress, waving it in her direction. Gladys lets her lids droop again. Perhaps she can pretend to be in a deep sleep already. She can’t stand the burden of Vernon’s face. Ever since she’s been in hospital, he’s looked like he did when she’d first plo
pped Elvis into his arms: as if the world had shifted so suddenly it had left him behind.
‘Glad,’ he says softly, ‘Elvis is on his way.’
She opens her eyes.
Vernon is holding his jaw at an odd angle. ‘He got a pass out.’ He swallows. ‘Had to fight his goddamn lieutenant for it. But now he’s coming.’
Gladys touches his hand, then succumbs to blackness.
She sleeps most of the day, dreaming about being a girl again, dancing for Vernon on an upturned crate. In the dream, her mama is behind her, keeping an eye on her daughter from her bed, and when she finishes dancing, Doll holds her mirror up to Gladys’s face and says, ‘Watch yourself, gal.’
When she wakes, she wonders if she is dead already. The room is dazzlingly white from the afternoon sun blasting through the window, and everywhere she looks she sees flowers. Pink lilies, babies’ breath, hollyhocks, zinnias, poppies, larkspur and yellow roses. But Vernon is sitting on her bed once again (or perhaps, she thinks, he never left his spot), squeezing her hand as he says her name. And then Elvis’s voice comes from the corridor, thanking strangers for their concern, telling them he’s sure his mama’s going to be well, that he’s happy to be here at last, that he knows they’re all doing a wonderful job.
‘Help me,’ she says. Vernon pulls her into a sitting position, and she leans against him as he props up the pillows, her head spinning, pain gripping her stomach.
‘I need water,’ she says, not because she wants to drink but because she doesn’t want Elvis to smell the sickness on her breath. Vernon pours her a cup from the pink pitcher on her bedside table. It’s the exact same colour as one she had in Lauderdale Courts. Before she can ask her husband to comb her hair, Elvis is coming through the door, rushing to the bed and throwing his arms around her, forcing his father to step back.
‘Mama!’ Elvis cries, burying his face in her neck.
‘My son,’ she says, grasping his shoulders as tightly as she can. He’s in his army shirt and the fabric feels rough beneath her fingers. He smells different, too: of boiled food and boot polish.
When he lifts his face, she tries not to look at the terror in his eyes.
It takes all her strength to smile and ask, ‘Now, what in the world is wrong with you?’
He looks confused.
‘I don’t know why y’all keep fussing,’ she continues. ‘I’m gonna be up on my feet in a couple of days.’
‘You’re talking,’ he says, letting out a breath. ‘That’s good, Mama.’
‘Sure I’m talking.’ She knows her voice is faint, but she won’t let it waver. ‘Why wouldn’t I be talking?’
Elvis glances across to his father, who is standing in the corner of the room, chewing on his thumbnail.
‘Daddy said …’
‘What did Daddy say?’
‘Nothing.’
She takes his face in her hands. Since he joined the army, he’s lost weight, and he is, if anything, even more handsome than before. ‘You eating good?’
‘I’m fine, Mama.’
She releases him. ‘Well, tell me boocups.’
He hangs his head. ‘Mama, I thought …’
She cannot stand for him to cry now. If he does that, she will have to order him to leave. Patting the mattress, she says, ‘Elvis. Tell me boocups.’
He clears his throat and begins. ‘I went out in the tank. A real big one. It was fun. They let me drive it.’
‘That’s good, son.’
‘And Sergeant Norwood’s real pleased. I think I’m convincing them, you know, that I’m just one of the guys.’
She nods.
He pauses, mashing the sheet in his hands. ‘You know I prayed, Mama, that you’d be well. I prayed to Jesse.’
‘He’s always with us.’
Vernon moves to the window and rests his forehead on the glass.
They’re all quiet for a while. Gladys closes her eyes, wishing Elvis would leave the room so she could call on the nurse for more medication. All this talking makes her sweat, and the pain is growing stronger. She’s struggling to breathe easy, and doesn’t want him to notice.
‘Couple of hundred people out there, at least,’ says Vernon, tapping the window. ‘Those gals never give up on you, son.’
‘You see?’ says Gladys. ‘I was right. Being in the army ain’t gonna make you one whit less popular.’
Elvis kisses her cheek. ‘It’s you they’re worried about,’ he whispers. ‘They’re here for you. Who do you think sent all these flowers?’
‘Why,’ she says, ‘I figured you did, son.’
Her lids droop. Although she knows Elvis is still there, waiting for her to reassure him again, she does not open her eyes. If she opens her eyes, she will have to moan and cry until she gets the pain relief she craves. If she opens her eyes, she fears the noise she’ll make may never end.
MY BEST GIRL: 1958
1958
After Gladys has closed her eyes, Vernon tells Elvis to go on home and get some sleep.
Elvis kisses his mama’s cheeks quickly, ashamed by his own repulsion at the bloated feel of her yellow flesh.
‘I’ll come back, baby,’ he says.
She squeezes his hand.
He lingers by the bed, hoping she will look at him once more. ‘I’ll come back tomorrow,’ he repeats. Her eyes remain closed.
Vernon stays by his wife’s side, saying he’ll see his son in the morning.
Leaving the hospital, Elvis thinks about calling Anita up, but decides he can’t deal with her questions about his mama right now. Yesterday, on the phone, Vernon had told him the doctors were talking about acute hepatitis and severe liver damage, saying Gladys’s condition was critical. When Elvis first saw her this afternoon, he was shocked by the purple veins popping in her neck, the tremble in her hands when she touched his face, the weariness in her voice. But, he tells himself, she had at least been sitting up and talking some. And she’d seemed steadier before he left.
What he really needs is something to distract him. So he takes a pill – just one, just enough to see him through – and fetches his cousin Billy. Together they pick up Gloria, Heidi and Frances and head over to the Memphian, which will always open after hours for him, to watch The Vikings. For a while he enjoys the sight of Kirk Douglas on a longship, but he can’t lose himself in the picture as he usually would. He keeps thinking of those bloated cheeks, those purple veins. Driving home, the others discuss the heat, the army, and Tony Curtis with a beard. Nobody talks about Gladys.
It’s midnight by the time Elvis drops off the girls. Before climbing from the car, Frances looks back at him with serious eyes. ‘I just know your mother will be home soon, Elvis,’ she says. ‘Will you be OK, all alone tonight?’
He catches her hand and kisses it. It smells of popcorn. She really couldn’t be any sweeter, he thinks, and for a moment he considers pulling her back, driving off someplace with her, and never returning.
Instead, he says, ‘Billy here will take care of me.’
Elvis hasn’t been back to Graceland since he started basic training at Fort Hood, and as he drives along Highway 51 he begins to feel a little excited. Approaching the gates, though, he sees that something is wrong. There are no blue and gold lights. Billy’s father, Travis, who Vernon employs as a groundsman, has been checking on the house every day, but he has obviously forgotten to turn them on. The lantern over the front door is just visible, a blur of light amidst the gloom of the trees.
Elvis stops the car at the gates. There’s nobody in the gatehouse, either.
‘Goddamn!’ he says. ‘What do I pay people for, Billy?’
‘To do their jobs?’ Billy ventures.
‘So why won’t they get off their asses?’
Billy shrugs.
‘You gotta climb over them gates, Billy boy.’
‘Say what?’
‘You heard me. Go on.’
Billy is fifteen and skinny, and he scrambles up the metal music-man in no time
. Elvis tries not to wince when Billy hooks his foot inside the iron rendering of his own head.
Once the gates are open, Elvis picks up his cousin and they drive to the steps of the mansion.
‘Lights are off, and nobody’s home,’ Elvis says, more to himself than to Billy. Billy smiles, uncertainly.
Elvis gets out of the car. The night buzzes with the sound of insects. The white lions glow faintly in the darkness.
As they mount the steps, he hangs back, saying, ‘You go first.’
Billy peers up at the silent house. ‘Me?’
‘Go on. Ain’t no ghosts in there,’ says Elvis, handing his cousin the keys and giving him a little shove towards the door.
In the gloom, it takes Billy a while to figure out the locks and push the big door open. ‘Where’s the light switch?’ he asks.
Elvis has to think before he answers. He’s never before arrived at an empty Graceland.
‘Try the left.’
He doesn’t step into the house until Billy has turned on the chandelier in the hallway. Inside, it’s uncomfortably warm, having been shut up for weeks, and still smells of Vernon’s cigarettes and Alberta’s bean pots. Billy stands beneath the chandelier while Elvis first finds the switch for the outside lighting, then rushes from room to room, turning on the air conditioning and every lamp. The whole place feels unfamiliar without Gladys. In each room, Elvis paces the length of the floor, checking that everything is as it ought to be, and that nobody is lurking in the shadows. He peeks behind the piano. Runs his hand along the back of the couch. Twitches the drapes. He even looks beneath the dining-room table. There’s nothing.
‘Hang on there a minute,’ he tells his cousin, who is still standing awkwardly in the hallway, waiting for instructions.
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