Child Bride (61 page)

Lisa plummeted before, during, and after Scott’s betrayal. She dropped out of the second Apple School in the eleventh grade and never went back, though she and Priscilla would give the impression, in interviews conducted then, that she was still enrolled in high school and contemplating where to go to college. “I knew,” said Lisa, “I was either going to stay there and die or I was going to have to get out.” Her downward slide climaxed after she had been awake for three straight days. “I was high on cocaine,” she said later, “and I had some more. It was either do it or go to sleep. I looked at it and I decided, ‘That’s it. I don’t want this anymore.’ And I flushed it down the toilet.” Priscilla put Lisa through the Purif, Scientology’s antidrug regime, then cloistered her in the Scientology Celebrity Centre Hotel, the Manor House, which is in an elegant old-world building resembling a castle, located in the Hollywood foothills. She was, by her admission, not pleased at Lisa’s decision to drop out of school, and it created a major conflict between them. “My daughter is very strong-willed, and she didn’t want to go back
to school. That’s when I put her in the Purif and the Scientology Celebrity Centre Hotel, to get herself straightened out.”

It was then that tabloids began to report that Lisa was in the clutches of an “evil cult” to which she intended to leave her fortune. What Scientology provided, to Lisa and Priscilla, according to their friend Brett Livingstone Strong, “was a form of protection.” The veiled activities of Scientologists—an attractive and familiar existence to Priscilla—buffered the Presley women, kept tabloid journalists at bay, offered them a “celebrity center” where they could feel insulated, pampered, taken care of, “where they could meet other celebrities,” said Brett. “I think Lisa liked it because she felt kind of special,” said Mike, a fellow Scientologist back then. “You know, they treated her special.… They understood her.”

Priscilla, for the most part, disregarded the more unusual, and at times seemingly sinister, aspects of the organization. She admitted to having “concerns” about reported heavy-handed tactics by church officials, from wiretapping to breaking and entering. “There have been changes,” she asserted, attributing policies to an earlier regime. “But it’s not any different from any other church … that goes through changes, that goes through growth. It goes through different managements. They’ve made some major changes in the last few years, and it seems to have all gotten better. So I’m happily satisfied, at this point, because they have changed, and the new management has taken over.”

Priscilla admitted to being “somewhat” disturbed by Scientologists’ adulation of L. Ron Hubbard, the organization’s founder, whom they call LRH, though she considered his status as a godlike figure no “different from [that of] Buddha, [or] Christ [or] Jimmy Swaggart. I mean, they are all leaders in their religious field. [Scientologists] have L. Ron Hubbard, who gave all the materials to them. They are giving their ‘exchange’ back to him. And I don’t get caught up in that.… Maybe management is over-PR-ing him. But all I know is that the literature is there, and I am for the literature.”

She had little comment on the report that the “secret” of the universe, disclosed in the final reportedly $6,000 Scientology course called Truth Revealed, is that the world was started by an intergalactic ruler named Xenu who captured beings and froze them, then deposited them near ten volcanoes, which were hydrogen-bombed. This course allegedly teaches that Xenu captured
the “thetans,” or souls, of these beings and “implanted” them with various perversions, which then attached themselves to humans as “body thetans.” He is said to have done this in order to create confusion and conflict. The course supposedly teaches Scientologists to find the “pressure points” on their bodies so that they can make telepathic contact with these thetans and be reminded of Xenu; at that point, the body thetans are released. “I don’t question it,” Priscilla remarked. “I’m not there yet, I’m not there to criticize, I’m not there to question it. All I know, what I’ve gotten out of it, [is that] it’s been very, very beneficial to me. So I’m not going to criticize what I don’t understand. When I get there, maybe it will make more sense to me. So why should I criticize or doubt it? So far, what I have applied, I have gotten everything from. Whatever course I’ve taken, whatever auditing I’ve done, has not disappointed me. Nothing surprises me anymore.”

Priscilla and Lisa, suggested Myrna Smith, a friend of them both, “take the aspects of Scientology that they can put in their lives and deal with, and some of it I don’t think they are concerned about. Realistically, they are using the organization, and the organization is using them.” Scientology has benefited from the public endorsement of high-profile celebrities like Priscilla and Lisa—from their name value as much as from any financial contributions. Both Priscilla and Lisa have denied making extravagant contributions to Scientology; Priscilla, both critics
and
supporters would suggest, would not part with her money.

Both Lisa and Priscilla later attributed Lisa’s withdrawal from drugs to Scientology. “It got her off drugs,” Priscilla said simply, in 1996. “And it helped her tremendously. God only knows where she would be right now. So I do attribute that to Scientology. And she does, too.” Priscilla sent Lisa off for a summer in Spain, under an assumed name, when she checked out of the Celebrity Centre Hotel, easing her out of what she would later refer to as an “identity crisis.” When Lisa returned, she thought of singing, something she and Scott batted about from time to time. Priscilla dissuaded her. “I never knew Lisa could sing, to be honest with you,” she said later. “She never took any lessons.” Priscilla placed Lisa’s notion of singing, at seventeen, in the same category as her failed piano lessons, at nine, or the $2,000 drum set she desperately wanted, which “she played a week and that was it. So when she said she wanted to sing, I discouraged it, only because it looked like she’d dabble in it and
that was it. So I discouraged her singing. In my mind, I thought, My God, she’s got some feet to follow here. She cannot be a dilettante. If she’s going to do something, she has to be extraordinary. She never wanted to take singing lessons.… [She just said,] ‘I want to be a singer.’ So I discouraged it … because she had proved that she didn’t commit to anything. So I figured, Gosh, I’m not going to put her out there in the world.” Instead, Lisa took an office job as a gofer for Jerry Schilling, who was doing some freelance work for Elvis’s estate.

Priscilla closed out the difficult year of 1984 on the cover of
TV Guide
as one of television’s “Ten Most Beautiful Women.” At thirty-nine, she could easily have passed for twenty-something—the result of extraordinary natural beauty and, it was rumored, cosmetic surgery. Kathy Westmoreland discussed with Elvis, on more than one occasion, both his and Priscilla’s plastic surgeries up to 1977. “He thought it was wonderful,” she said. Priscilla’s work, “from what I understood, was nose, chin, cheekbones. He was telling me what she had done.” Joan Quinn claimed Priscilla “was doing a lot” in terms of cosmetic work in the late seventies, “always going to spas, but always in private situations.” Joan recalled Priscilla having liposuction, and Shirley Dieu learned about her plastic surgery through Myrna Smith—Joe Esposito, Shirley’s boyfriend, had kept Priscilla’s secret. “It is such a guarded secret. She had her nose and her breasts done in Palm Springs. And she’s also had two face peels.” Priscilla, recalled her voice teacher, Elizabeth Sabine, was extremely interested in Elizabeth’s skin and questioned her at length about skin peels.

Mike, Priscilla, and Lisa flew to Mike’s hometown of Pensacola for what would be their last Christmas together. Mike had noticed tremendous changes in Priscilla from when they first met, more than six years before—the consequences of fame he had forewarned her about. “I saw it sucking her up, and the name
Priscilla Presley
was getting bigger and bigger. I shake a little when I think about it, because I go back to that original conversation I had with her, ‘Do you really want this?’ ”

Priscilla really wanted it. She and Mike effectively ended their relationship after Christmas, when she was named, as a result of
Dallas
, the most popular television star in Germany, where she had been a schoolgirl twenty-five years before.

She had also encountered the man she would come to consider the true love of her life, via an introduction through Kathy Monderine,
a costumer on
Dallas
with whom she was friendly. Kathy’s Brazilian husband, Roberto, mentioned to Priscilla that he had a friend who was a screenwriter who had a “couple of scripts that might be good for her,” as Kathy Monderine put it. “I was looking for a script to do right after Dallas,” said Priscilla. “We had time off; it was during hiatus. And I was talking to Roberto, and I said I’d like to do a movie-of-the-week, and he goes, ‘Do you have anybody yet?’ and I said, ‘No, not really. I’m looking. I’m going to put the word out through my agent.’ And he said, ‘You know, before you do that, I have a very talented guy that I know.… He’s a wonderful writer.’ Well, I usually don’t do things like this, but I know Roberto, so I told him, ‘Gosh, I don’t know. Do I have to meet him?’ And he said, ‘I’ll have him come to the set.’ So I then told Roberto it was okay.” Roberto’s friend was a tall, well-built Brazilian of Italian descent named Marco Garibaldi. He had already met with Linda Gray and Victoria Principal, two of Priscilla’s costars on
Dallas
, to discuss “hiatus ideas” with them. Roberto Monderine was, quite evidently, using his costumer wife’s access to the cast of
Dallas
—the attractive
female
cast—to help his handsome Brazilian friend shop a screenplay, or himself, in the classic Hollywood tradition. Linda Gray and Victoria Principal weren’t interested in Marco or his script.

On the day of the appointed meeting, “I got cold feet,” recounted Priscilla. “So I called Marco and said, ‘I can’t meet with you.’ And Marco says, ‘Well, I just canceled two or three appointments, and I was really planning on doing this.’ And I felt so bad.” Marco told Jerry Schilling about it later. “She canceled on him,” said Jerry, “and he called her up and told her he thought his time was valuable and how could she do this?” Whichever version was correct, Priscilla was impressed by Marco’s boldness and rescheduled their meeting. Marco, accompanied by Kathy Monderine, went to Priscilla’s dressing room on the set of
Dallas
, where the three of them spent about an hour, according to Kathy, mostly laughing. The third time was the charm for Marco. Linda Gray and Victoria Principal had passed on what he had to offer; Priscilla responded instantly. Neither Marco nor Kathy—nor Priscilla—ever mentioned his proposed screenplay during their hour-long conversation in Priscilla’s dressing room, though he had several scripts with him, Priscilla said later. “It was so relaxed,” said Kathy. “It was friends getting together, and that’s how it started off. There was
no, ‘Oh, my God, I’m meeting a star!’ He’s not a star-struck person. We had fun, and that impressed her. Here was a guy who could laugh and have a good time.” Though she denied there was a romance, Kathy admitted later that “sparks flew” between Marco and Priscilla. Roberto Monderine had, quite inadvertently, tapped into everything Priscilla looked for in a man, on the conscious and subconscious level. Garibaldi was the very essence of the strong, dark, powerful male Priscilla had been seeking, in one form or another, since she was a child listening to Mario Lanza. Jerry Schilling, who would spend time with Priscilla and Marco as a couple, would later “kid” her, saying she had finally found her tall, dark Latin lover. “There is a certain strength I feel with dark men,” Priscilla once told
Vanity Fair.
“They’re very virile.” Sex was fundamental to Priscilla.

Priscilla talked to Kathy about Marco afterward, saying what a “cute guy” he was, that she liked him, how “sweet” he was. “And she is very private about her thoughts, too.” Marco said later it was not “love at first sight” for him, with Priscilla, “though she is obviously a beautiful woman.” The exact progression of the relationship was confusing, by the various parties’ accounts. Kathy remembered Priscilla and Marco getting together for several “lunch meetings,” and “from there I guess time went on and they realized how much they liked each other.” Priscilla said, “We met a few more times. I really liked him. We’d meet for lunch, or he’d come to the set.” She described the meetings as “working” conversations, stressing that she and Marco had a “business relationship” for about three months before they became lovers; for the first time, she said, sex did not come first. The irony was interesting, for, in Marco, Priscilla had finally found romantic fulfillment. “It was the first relationship that I had that we were friends first. The sex didn’t get in the way.… And it really meant a lot to me, because we really liked being with each other. We got to know each other really well. It had nothing to do with sex. It was just strictly business. And having a good time. And it evolved to us going out and dating.” The screenplay, which had ostensibly brought them together, fell by the wayside. “We didn’t do the script,” said Priscilla. Neither the Monderines nor Priscilla nor Marco would later recall what the screenplay was even about.

Marco would say, later, that he and Priscilla were just friends for “six or seven months” before the relationship turned romantic, as opposed to Priscilla’s estimate of three months. Both timetables
indicated that Priscilla was involved with Marco while she was still seeing Mike Edwards. Priscilla and Mike split over Christmas of 1984, after they returned from Pensacola. Less than a month later, sometime in January of 1985, when Priscilla returned to L.A. after filming
Night of 100 Stars
in New York, Mike stopped by her house on a Saturday night in the hope of reconciling, as he and Priscilla had done so often before. When he learned Priscilla was out of town for the weekend, he telephoned, on an intuition, Two Bunch Palms, a couples spa in Palm Springs they had once spoken of trying. Posing as Priscilla’s manager, he learned that she was staying at the spa with Marco, indicating that the friendship had already crossed the line from business into romance. Mike, hoping to “pull her back with sex,” drove to Priscilla’s house on Sunday night, knowing she would have to return to the
Dallas
set the next morning. He sat in his car and waited. He soon had the answer he was seeking. “She came back alone, dressed all in red. In tight, tight pants. She didn’t wear tight pants. She hates them, because they hurt. I knew then that there was another man in her life.”