Elvis and Ginger: Elvis Presley's Fiancée and Last Love Finally Tells Her Story (27 page)

Dr. Nichopoulos came to the room. He didn’t tell me what was wrong, and Elvis was finally able to go to sleep. When he woke later, however, he still wasn’t feeling well. Elvis told me he needed to speak with some people about his upcoming shows, so I went to my room.

Finally, after much discussion with various men in Elvis’s entourage, it was decided that the tour would be canceled and Elvis would go into a hospital back home. I was very concerned about Elvis, but felt comforted by the thought that in a hospital they’d really be able to diagnose what was wrong and monitor his health.

We flew back to Memphis and went to Graceland. Elvis was going to check into Baptist Memorial Hospital. I wanted to go with him, but Elvis now said that he was feeling so bad, he’d rather have someone take me home while he went to the hospital.

This worried me even more, but he was insistent. “I’ll call you from there,” he promised.

Members of his entourage gathered around and they jumped into action, taking off with Elvis and leaving me at the proverbial curb.

At home, I didn’t hear anything for hours. I decided to call Graceland and spoke with Aunt Delta, but she had no news. Elvis finally called me that night to say the hospital was running some tests.

He called me again the next day and said hello. He wasn’t feeling any worse, thankfully, but when I said I’d like to come and see him, Elvis told me that right now he needed to go over business with some people.

I thought it was a little odd that Elvis wasn’t asking me to visit with him. (Not until after Elvis’s death, would I hear that when Elvis had taken ill in Baton Rouge, he was informed that three of his former bodyguards were going to publish a potentially damaging book filled with hurtful stories about him. Looking back, I strongly feel that Elvis had been discussing this book with others while he was in the hospital and didn’t ask for me, because he didn’t want me to know about it then. It wouldn’t be until much later, that Elvis would mention the book to me.)

Elvis called the following day, too. This time he let me know he had an intestinal flu but was feeling better. “I want you to come to the hospital tomorrow and show my nurse your engagement ring,” he said.

Before leaving Graceland to go home, I had tucked the ring back into my jewelry box for safekeeping. The next evening, my sister-in-law drove me over to get it. When I rang the front doorbell, Charlie answered. I stepped inside the foyer and, noticing movement in the kitchen doorway, I glanced that way and was surprised to see Lisa peeking her head out at me.

“Hi,” I said.

Charlie smiled and said, “Priscilla’s here, too. They’re in town visiting. Would you like to meet her?”

“Sure,” I said, caught totally off guard. I followed Charlie toward Dodger’s bedroom. Suddenly I remembered how, when I was a child, I’d sometimes pass Graceland and imagine Elvis, Priscilla, and Lisa inside. How bizarre it was that I was here—and so was Priscilla!

I hastily reminded myself that Elvis had told me I was the “lady of the house” now, but it was still surreal to walk into Dodger’s bedroom and find her in bed, with Priscilla sitting in a chair beside her.

“Hello,” I greeted Dodger.

Then Charlie introduced me to Priscilla, a petite woman with chin-length hair.

I sat on a chair near the foot of the bed, and Priscilla and I began to talk. She was friendly and at ease.

I relaxed a little, figuring Priscilla must have seen Elvis with other women before me since their divorce. Maybe this situation felt more natural to her than it did to me. At any rate, she seemed like a nice person, and I was glad about that because becoming Elvis’s wife would essentially mean Priscilla would be in my life, too.

At one point, we got into a conversation about dogs. I told her about Odyssey, my new Great Dane, and Priscilla said she had owned a couple of Great Danes in the past. They were great dogs, Priscilla said, very gentle.

“But don’t get too attached to them,” she warned. “They don’t live very long.”

Lisa had joined us in the room. She had been sitting on the floor, but now she stood up, walked over to me, and began playing with my hair. It was an awkward moment, to say the least.

Finally, Priscilla said, “Lisa, Ginger may not want you to do that.”

I looked at Lisa and smiled. “It’s all right,” I said.

But Lisa obediently walked away and sat down on the floor again.

I suddenly remembered that Elvis was waiting for me; my thoughts returned to getting my ring. But how could I make a graceful exit? It hardly seemed like good manners to jump up and say, “Excuse me, but I have to go get my engagement ring.”

At last, I decided to keep it simple. “I just stopped by to get something,” I told Priscilla. “It was nice to meet you.”

Then I said good-bye to Lisa and Dodger, rushed upstairs, retrieved my ring, and quickly left the house.

At the hospital, I was relieved to find Elvis looking better and in good spirits. He called his nurse into the room and proudly showed her my ring.

After the nurse left, he said, “Priscilla’s in town.”

“I know. I just met her,” I said, and explained about stopping by Graceland to get my ring.

Elvis laughed. “I wish I could have seen that,” he said. Then, after I’d told him that Priscilla and I had talked a little, he seemed to approve. “It’s important that Priscilla and you are friendly for Lisa’s sake,” he said.

He would be leaving the hospital soon, Elvis added, and Priscilla and Lisa were coming to see him. Not ready for what could be another awkward encounter, I stayed just a short while longer and then left.

After Elvis left the hospital, he had a little over two weeks before his next tour began. Lisa remained at Graceland for a few days and, weather permitting, she was often outside, driving around in a pale blue golf cart with her name written on its side, a birthday gift from Elvis. Lisa would come into Elvis’s bedroom sometimes, always curious to see what he and I were doing. You could see Elvis’s joy when she was around.

During this visit with his daughter, Elvis took Lisa and me out for a ride on one of his three-wheelers for the first time. It was a cycle with one wheel in the front, two in the back, and a passenger seat. With Lisa sandwiched between us, we rode to the airport and looked at planes.

Lisa loved being at Graceland, and I was glad she and I had gotten to be around each other a little. When it was time for her to return to Los Angeles, Lisa didn’t want to leave; she hid and the bodyguards had to look for her, eventually finding her near the meditation garden.

Elvis just wanted to spend the rest of the time before the tour relaxing. Late one night, he decided he wanted to take a small group of us to see the new Peter Sellers film,
The Pink Panther Strikes Again
. He rented a theater for the viewing and it was a wild feeling to walk in, knowing we had the entire theater to ourselves. Elvis and I took seats in the center of the auditorium, with the rest of the people in our group either sitting in the same row or behind us.

When everyone was settled in, Elvis looked over his shoulder toward the projectionist, and shouted, “Roll ’em!”

Before I knew it, we were all in hysterics. That film turned out to be one of my all-time favorite comedies.

But the jovial mood would be interrupted a few days later when
Elvis and I were sitting in his bedroom talking when the commode in his bathroom began to make a noise. It was very early in the morning. As we talked, the noise continued. Elvis glanced toward the bathroom every few minutes, clearly becoming increasingly annoyed.

Before long, he quietly got up and left the room. He returned moments later with a machine gun in his hand. I thought I must be imagining things as Elvis walked right past me with the gun and went into the bathroom.

“Elvis, what are you doing?” I screamed.

He answered with a deafening barrage of gunfire, blasting his toilet to smithereens.

This was upsetting and completely unacceptable. I was more shocked than anything else by this action. I felt a cool stillness come over me.

Then I got angry, really angry. How could he think that this was okay?

Sometimes it seemed like Elvis was playing a game of “see what I can do” in order to watch people’s reactions. His cousin Billy would later say in a book that he thought this was funny. It wasn’t. I decided to leave before Elvis could exit the bathroom.

As I hastily descended the front stairs into the foyer, I glanced up and saw water running from the ceiling onto the chandelier. I walked out the front door and got into my car. My hands were shaking on the wheel as I drove home. I could only hope that, by leaving Graceland, I might be sending a message to Elvis that this sort of behavior wasn’t right.

I had hoped to enter my parents’ house quietly, without disturbing anyone, but as I pulled into the driveway, our dogs started barking and woke my mother. I never wanted to burden her, as she and my dad had enough going on with work and their marital problems, but I couldn’t hide my feelings. I was too rattled.

My mother tried to comfort me as I told her what happened. I also explained the incidents in Palm Springs and Hawaii that had troubled me. I had kept these events from her before, but now everything came spilling out. She couldn’t believe it and was clearly disheartened.

“I don’t want you being in any situation where you could get hurt by someone else,” she said, adding no matter who the person was, I came first.

I knew she wanted to protect me, but I explained how strongly I felt that Elvis would never really hurt me. At the same time, I had come home because I needed to clear my head and touch base with all the goodness in Elvis and everything that had drawn me to him.

My mother could see that I was trying to work things out. “Whatever you decide to do, I’ll support you,” she said at last.

We both left it at that and went to our rooms. I lay in bed for a little while, worrying that Elvis might come over. I wasn’t ready to talk. He wouldn’t like me walking out on him—I could predict that based on his reaction in Hawaii when I left while he was talking to me—but I couldn’t just sit by and let him do something that I saw as terribly wrong.

I eventually fell asleep. When I woke up that afternoon, I went over the event again with Rosemary. I hadn’t heard from Elvis. I didn’t think my message about his behavior would sink in if I called him first—I definitely felt Elvis owed me an apology—so Rosemary and I went to see some friends.

By the time we returned home later that night, my mother said Elvis had called. When she told him Rosemary and I were out, he had asked to speak with Terry. She had told him Terry was on a college campus in another city, fulfilling a duty as Miss Tennessee, and they hung up. I waited for Elvis to call again, worried about how our conversation might go, but I heard nothing more from him that night.

The following day, Terry returned home. The minute she saw me, she asked, “What’s going on with you and Elvis?”

Startled, I asked how she knew something was up.

“I was sitting in an auditorium last night when a state trooper came in and told me I had a phone call,” she said. “I thought something terrible must have happened to someone, so I followed the state trooper outside.”

The trooper led my sister across a field and into an administrative building with a couple of security guards. “One of them handed me a phone, and Elvis was on the line. He sounded angry, saying that he’d like me to come to Graceland so he could talk about you.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing! It sounded like Elvis was making this situation out to be my fault. He had no right to be angry at me. I wasn’t the one who’d done something wrong!

“He wanted to send his plane for me,” Terry continued, “but I told him I couldn’t leave because of the event, plus I had driven Tony’s mother up there with me. Elvis told me to let Tony’s mother drive the car home, but I told him she had bad eyesight and it was an eight-hour drive.”

Apparently, Elvis hadn’t taken no for an answer easily. Terry said it was awkward, as she had to keep saying, “Elvis, I can’t,” in front of the security guards, who had remained in the room.

“When I got off the phone,” Terry added, “the guards asked me if that was really Elvis.” Terry said she was completely rattled by the call and couldn’t wait to get home.

Did Elvis really not understand why I’d left? Did his stance that “no one walks out on Elvis” obscure his ability to see the issue at hand clearly?

I certainly didn’t want to break up with him, but I sincerely wanted Elvis to understand why I had reacted the way I did. Hearing that Elvis had called Terry and sounded angry upset me. I decided not to call him just yet.

The following day, one of Elvis’s aides called to ask me to come to Graceland. I thought things over. I wanted our relationship to work. I still felt Elvis owed me an apology. Then I remembered that he had tried to reach me that first night. Maybe he was trying to apologize after all, I thought, so I went to Graceland.

When I arrived, Elvis was seated in his bed with
The Prophet
lying open in his lap. I noticed that a new toilet had been installed in the bathroom. It looked as though nothing out of the ordinary had gone on here.

I sat down quietly beside him and waited, knowing
The Prophet
was one of the books he relied on for words of comfort and wisdom, especially about love.

Elvis turned to me and began quoting a passage from the book, saying, “You know, Ginger, ‘When love beckons to you, follow him, Though his ways are hard and steep. And when his wings enfold you yield to him, Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.’”

With love had come hurt, definitely, but Elvis had been going through his books to find an answer. I understood that he had chosen this passage to convey his emotions to me. Elvis and I were learning about love together. Whether through the lyrics of a song or words from a book, I knew this was Elvis’s way of trying to have me understand him sometimes.

Nobody at the house—not the maids, Aunt Delta, Charlie, or the aides—ever asked me why Elvis shot his toilet, leading me to believe that Elvis must have said something to them. Either that, or they had simply witnessed incidents similar to this one before and were used to it by now.