A Little Thing Called Life

by Linda Thompson

  Complicating my growing awareness of Elvis’s cheating and my ambivalence over what to do was the fact that he seemed to need me now more than ever, because his drug use was intensifying. That August we returned to the Vegas Hilton for another month of shows, and I grew concerned by the attempted interventions of those around him. There were times when the guys in his entourage, or even Elvis’s personal physician, Dr. George Nichopoulos, aka Dr. Nick, emptied out the contents of some of Elvis’s pills, so they would act like a placebo when he took them. Their hearts were in the right place, but I never wanted to do this. I was afraid if Elvis thought his pills weren’t working as they should be, he might take more to make up the difference and accidentally overdose.

  Often it wasn’t even clear what Elvis was on. On one occasion, Elvis wanted to go see Don Rickles perform—we both loved his acerbic, indiscriminately insulting humor—but Elvis was under the influence of one of his substances of choice that evening. When Don introduced Elvis in the audience, Elvis proceeded to make his way up onto the stage with Don. Don seemed a little taken aback, but honored to have Elvis share his stage. That is, until Elvis began reading from the Bible he had brought with him. For minutes Elvis droned on and on, reading from 1 Corinthians 13 until final everyone had enough.

  “Elvis, are we going anywhere with this?” Don finally burst out. “Or are we just jerking off up here?”

  Needless to say, that comment broke the reverential tone, and cracked the audience up.

  “Naw, man, I-I-I-,” Elvis stuttered. “I just wanted to share a little Bible wisdom with you all.”

  Elvis then left the stage to thunderous applause.

  Later on in the show, Elvis leaned into me.

  “Honey, I’ve got to piss like a racehorse,” he confided. “I’m not sure what to do. I sure as hell can’t hold it much longer, but I can’t get up to go to the men’s room, because I’ve already interrupted Don’s show, and if I get up, you know every eye in here will follow me and take away from Don. I can’t do that to Don. Tell you what—just hand me that empty glass right there.”

  “What?!” I challenged, knowing he was about to do the unthinkable.

  “Honey, hand me the damned glass, I tell you, before I piss my pants!”

  I casually slid the glass over to him, whereupon he deftly slipped the glass beneath the table and, out of view, covered his lap with my napkin, unzipped his pants, and peed in the glass until it was brimming with gold. He waited a bit, then casually set the full glass back on the table. I must admit, I was impressed with how easily and surreptitiously Elvis accomplished his goal of emptying his bladder in a full show room of people with only he and I being the wiser.

  More often than not, though, when Elvis’s prescription pills incapacitated him, the mood was far more frightening than amusing. In fact, one of my most chilling experiences with Elvis came during one of our stays in Vegas that year.

  As usual, we had ordered room service—chicken noodle soup and his favorite, honeydew melon. One of the guys spread the food out on a towel on the bed, where Elvis was propped up, eating his soup.

  “Honey, I’m going to go wash my face and brush my teeth and get ready for bed,” I said. “Have you already taken your sleeping pill?” At the time, he was taking Placidyl, which was a powerful sleeping pill and tranquilizer I’d learned to watch him closely on, and so this routine had become second nature.

  “Yeah, I already took my sleeping pill,” he said, his voice mellow.

  “Okay, all right, I’ll be right back then,” I said. “I’m just going to wash my face and brush my teeth.”

  I was gone just long enough to hurry through my bedtime routine, but by the time I came back into the bedroom, he was facedown in his big bowl of chicken noodle soup. Whatever he took besides the Placidyl hit him hard and fast, and he was in real trouble now. I could just see the headline: “Elvis Presley dead, drowns in a bowl of chicken noodle soup in his Las Vegas suite.”

  I shouted to wake him up, but he was completely passed out in his chicken soup, as if he was dead. Terrified, I jumped onto the bed, moved the soup out of the way, lifted his head, and straddled him. As I held his head up by his hair, he had chicken soup and noodles all over the front of his hair, and all over his face. I started to clean his throat, literally pulling out chunks of food. The whole time, I was yelling at him, trying to wake him up. One of the doctors had left a shot of Ritalin by the bed, in case he ever had too much of one of the sedatives he regularly took. None of my attempts had seemed to make any difference, and so I picked up the Ritalin and administered it to him. Still holding on to his slack torso, I leaned over and called one of his regular Vegas doctors.

  “You need to get over here,” I said. “He’s out, and I don’t know if he’s aspirated some of his chicken soup, but you need to get over here right away.”

  I had already cleared out his throat enough that his breathing was no longer compromised, although he had not yet regained consciousness. There was nothing for me to do but sit with him, keeping him in a seated position, and pray. The doctor arrived within a few minutes and gave him another shot, which I believe contained a bit more Ritalin.

  Although the doctor told me that Elvis would be fine, I kept a restless vigil in our bed beside him. A few hours later, he awoke, just enough to look up at me in wonderment. When he spoke, he used that same stalled, stilted, laborious speech I’d begun to hear more and more, which he gravitated toward when he was really out of it.

  “M-M-M-Mommy,” he said.

  “What, honey, are you all right?” I asked, leaning down to hear his words.

  “I-I-I-I had a-a-a dream,” he said, taking an excruciating amount of time to get out these few words.

  “What did you dream?” I asked.

  “I dreamed that I was dying,” he eventually said.

  “Well, honey, you fell asleep in your chicken soup, and I had to call the doctor,” I said, trying to soothe him with my voice, as a mother would. “I gave you a shot of Ritalin that was here, and then he came and gave you another shot of Ritalin and revived you enough that you’re okay now. You’re okay.”

  “I had a dream that … I had a dream that you were my twin, and that you let me be born first,” he said, taking his time to form each word. “And you didn’t get enough air, and you smothered. You let me be born, and I lived, but you died.”

  “Aw, honey, it’s okay,” I said. “We’re both okay.”

  But I was thinking, Wow, I wonder if that’s how it really happened, when he was born and his twin brother, Jessie Garon, was born dead. Maybe he had all of that memory lodged deep somewhere in his subconscious, and when he nearly died himself, it rose to the surface of his mind. While I was moved by the fact that he’d dreamed I was his twin, I also felt the danger implicit in the image he’d described: that I had died while I was trying to save his life. More than just a dream, it was a powerful metaphor. It brought home for me how I was putting aside my whole life to care for him, and just how exhausted I was as a result. In my total devotion to him, I was losing myself.

  The hardest truth to accept was that, no matter how selfless I was, my devotion was ultimately in vain. I could only do so much in the face of his self-destruction. I had known enough to assess Elvis’s state before leaving him alone to get ready for bed, and even so, I’d nearly lost him. Having witnessed all I had by this point, I knew it was only a matter of time before something catastrophic happened, which made my bottomless love and care feel futile. Especially when his appreciation of my efforts did not stop him from spending time with other women. Even when he knew such behavior was painful for me. His hurtful and disturbing choices involving drug use and his other women were increasingly driving me toward depletion, a state where there would be no more for me to give. Maybe, deep down, I knew this process was inevitable, and necessary for my own self-preservation.

  Elvis recovered from his near-death experience, but it was clear he was in no condition to keep up with the rigorous d
emands of his Las Vegas performance schedule. This was not an easy admission for him to make, to himself or anyone else, but he made the difficult decision to cancel the rest of his two-week engagement, although he had only performed on three days.

  Because his breathing was compromised from all the sedatives, we flew back to Memphis on a private plane equipped with oxygen. And so began another stay at Baptist Memorial Hospital to treat what was reported as “exhaustion” when the news was announced in the press on August 22, 1975.

  This was when I think people largely began to suspect that something was amiss with Elvis. There were stirrings that he’d been slurring his speech onstage, or that he’d acted like he was drunk, or on drugs, or not fully himself. Up until then, he’d done a remarkably good job of keeping the reality of his drug usage from his adoring fans. Yes, there were a few occurrences when he basically crashed onstage, and maybe he wasn’t enunciating clearly, or he forgot the lyrics to a few of his songs—shows at which some audience members realized something wasn’t exactly right. But usually he managed to charm the audience members by making light of his shortcomings, and up until this canceled Vegas run, he was mostly able to hide the truth of his dependency on prescription drugs.

  As soon as we got home, we checked Elvis into the hospital for a two-and-a-half-week visit. During this particular stay, he received a liver biopsy, which meant he had to lie flat on his back and remain completely motionless for twenty-four hours. And of course, when they did the procedure, he wanted me right there with him in the room, holding his hand the whole time, a unique challenge all its own for me.

  While, thankfully, the test came back negative as far as cancer went, this was his second hospitalization in a year, and it was becoming more difficult to deny the problem. Dr. Nick even went so far as to bring in two physicians who were addiction specialists, or at least much more knowledgeable than most health-care professionals were in that day and age. These doctors worked closely with Elvis during his stay. He had apparently been on Demerol, Dilaudid, Percodan, and a variety of other powerful painkillers as well as the sleeping medications. His doctors gave him methadone to assist him in withdrawing from the opiates. This really did help him, allowing him to be drug-free for the first time in years. Two nurses were hired to watch over him in his first few weeks at home. Their names were Mrs. Cocke and Mrs. Seaman. It did not escape Elvis’s attention, or his sense of humor, that he was now, once again, surrounded by the inexplicably coincidental, sometimes hysterically funny, circumstances of his life.

  Elvis was given a good long time to recuperate and spent much of that fall 1975 and early winter 1976 at home at Graceland, using a new passion project to keep him busy and excited. In April 1975, he’d purchased a twenty-eight-seat Convair 880 airplane for $250,000. We flew together several times to Dallas to oversee the reconfiguration and decoration of the plane. He immediately christened it the Lisa Marie and refurbished it to his exact specifications, including a bedroom, conference room and bar, and video system with four screens. Elvis and I had quickly developed a routine when we flew on the Lisa Marie, which was to get on the plane and go straight back to the bedroom, where we’d sleep or rest. Sometimes he’d change into pajamas, and I’d change into something casual, and we’d climb into bed and spoon for the duration of the flight.

  Elvis had always been known to indulge in his whims. Now, with the Lisa Marie at our disposal, we had more wild and spontaneous fun than ever before, flying to Denver to eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for dinner or heading to Vail to watch me flail around on skis. Difficult as things had become, Elvis always found ways to remind me of how deeply in love we were.

  Still, no amount of travel could hide the fact that these carefree moments were becoming less frequent. In early December, we returned to Las Vegas so Elvis could make up the shows he had been forced to cancel. He clearly seemed to be feeling better, but there was a sense now that the trouble always lurked below, ready to erupt at any time. While in Vegas, Elvis requested a simple errand, although by this point we all knew what his real intentions were.

  “Go get Red,” he said to me. “I want to go to the dentist.”

  When Red followed me into the suite, he was less than enthusiastic about facilitating Elvis’s ability to get what he wanted. Elvis was already in one of his moods, and so this attitude set him off.

  Elvis didn’t like the way Red reacted to him. So he started yelling. And then he actually went into our bedroom and came back out into the suite’s living room with a gun. Red has a temper, too, so he got mad. Now Elvis was yelling at Red, and Red was yelling back at Elvis. When Red’s cousin Sonny came in, he watched the proceedings uneasily.

  Like an idiot, I stood between Elvis and Red, facing Elvis, trying to talk some sense into him.

  “Please stop,” I said between tears. “Stop. Just please stop.”

  The situation cooled down soon after that, and Sonny pulled me aside.

  “Don’t ever do that again,” he said. “Don’t you ever stand between Elvis and Red, or anybody else, if anybody’s got a gun. I know you were just trying to stop the situation, and you knew if you stood there, Elvis was not going to use the gun. But the gun could’ve gone off.”

  “It could’ve gone off on Red, too,” I said.

  “I know, but it’s not your battle,” Sonny said. “I know you were trying to defuse the situation, but don’t ever do that again.”

  “Must Have Been Angels”

  Sometimes

  I think about the hearts of angels

  Perfect light

  To guide their flight away from danger

  With their halos of gold

  Their wisdom of old

  And feathered wings that unfold

  It must have been angels that carried me

  When I was too weak to lift my feet

  When I was too blind to clearly see

  Heavenly light shone down on me

  It must have been angels

  Watching over me

  Time is cruel

  To youth and grace and flawless beauty

  Life is hard

  Do unto others—that’s our duty

  When my soul was in pain

  With more loss than gain

  I heard an angel speak my name

  It must have been angels that carried me

  When I was too weak to lift my feet

  When I was too blind to clearly see

  Heavenly light shone down on me

  It must have been angels

  Watching over me

  Every day I feel the touch of an angel

  With the wind and the rain in my hair

  The warmth of the sun will soon appear

  It must have been angels that carried me

  When I was too weak to lift my feet

  When I was too blind to clearly see

  Heavenly light shone down on me

  Love came and set me free

  It must have been angels

  It must have been angels

  Watching over me

  LYRIC: LINDA THOMPSON

  Chapter Ten

  The Pain of Too Much Tenderness

  As 1976 wore on, I came to realize with increasing awareness that I had to leave Elvis. What had been untenable for years had finally become impossible.

  One night when we were home at Graceland, I woke up, and Elvis wasn’t in bed beside me. Knowing he was under the strong influence of his sleeping medication, I was immediately concerned, and so I went on a search-and-rescue mission. I walked all around the upstairs of Graceland, but I couldn’t find him anywhere. Finally, I peeked my head into Lisa Marie’s room, although I couldn’t imagine why he’d possibly be in there, as she wasn’t staying with us at the time. But there he was, lying on the little daybed in Lisa’s room that had once been used by the baby nurse and nanny. He was sprawled across the sofa, completely out of it, with his pajamas’ fly open, while a woman who was temporarily working at Graceland kissed him. I could
see the back of her head moving, but it looked like he was asleep, or barely clinging to the edge of consciousness.

  I cleared my throat, loudly. “Ahem!”

  The girl jumped away from him, falling abruptly to the floor beside the daybed.

  “Oh dear, Linda, this isn’t what it looks like,” she said.

  Elvis struggled to open his eyes enough to look up and focus on me with great effort.

  “You should’ve knocked,” he slurred.

  “Should’ve knocked?” I sputtered. “I should have knocked?” I repeated incredulously. “I live here. I shouldn’t have to knock. Or walk in to find you kissing another girl.”

  “I wasn’t kissing her,” he said. “She was kissing me.”

  “Either way, I’m out,” I said.

  The female employee slunk out as quickly as possible. I went to my dressing room and started packing. After Elvis had slept off most of the effects of his medications, he came ambling back into our bedroom suite area, where he spotted my suitcase. He seemed surprised.

  “Where are you going?” he asked.

  “I’m going to my house,” I said.

  “That’s not why I bought you that house, so you could just leave me whenever you want,” he said.

  “Well, I’m not going to walk in and see you kissing another girl, and have you tell me I should’ve knocked, when I live here,” I said. “I either live here, or I don’t live here.”

  “You can’t leave,” he said.