Lisa Marie Wants to Know Why Michael
is ‘So Selfish’
In October 1994, about six months after Michael and Lisa were married, the two of them and some friends were invited to dine with Elizabeth Taylor at her Bel Air home. Sixty-two-year-old Elizabeth took twenty-six-year-old Lisa aside to offer some hints as to how she might keep her husband happy. ‘Always look your best,’ she told Lisa. ‘He’s into glamour, and you must be into it, too. And if you don’t like the jewellery he gives you, fake it; act like you do. And keep separate bedrooms to keep him guessing. Also,’ she said, ‘find the right colours and wear the hell out of them.’
Later, when Elizabeth was out of ear shot, Lisa asked Michael, ‘What era is
she
living in? No wonder she’s been divorced seven times!’
‘Now, Lisa,’ Michael said, with a wag of his finger. ‘Be nice.’
Lisa also found it amusing that Michael was, as she put it to one intimate, ‘an absolute cosmetics freak’. He would spend hours in the bathroom, she said, putting on and taking off different kinds of makeups. In fact, she never saw him without his makeup. If they slept together, in the morning Michael would be gone before she awakened – in the bathroom, applying his morning makeup. She’d look at his pillow and find it smeared with makeup. ‘It didn’t bother her,’ said one friend. ‘She thought of it as being sort of rock and roll, freaky, you know? “Lots of rock stars wear makeup,” she said. “Whatever. I don’t care, as long as he’s happy. What doI care?” Lisa would try to surprise him, though, by waking up before him and then tapping him on the shoulder. The sun would be up, and there he would be, with smudged makeup in the light of day. “No, Lisa,” he would shriek, “don’t look. Please, don’t look!” Then, he would jump out of bed and scamper into the bathroom. Lisa would crack up.’
However, light moments like that one between Michael and Lisa had become rare. A major problem for them in their marriage was that Michael insisted that he still be free to go on vacations with young male friends, even though he was now a married man. Lisa did not believe her husband was a paedophile; she made that much clear. ‘I wouldn’t have let him near my kids if I ever thought that,’ she later said. ‘Never once did I see him do anything inappropriate, ever.’ However, she was dismayed that he would still want to be seen in the company of youngsters, considering all that they had been through with the Jordie Chandler matter. She felt that any public display with youngsters, and especially with boys, would only serve to spark more rumour and innuendo about him and, by extension, her. While many in her husband’s ‘world of wonder’, as she called his insulated environment, put up with Michael’s poor judgement, she wasn’t going to be one of them. However, Michael was not going to compromise; he had no experience with the notion. When the two fought about the ongoing presence of youngsters in his life, he laid down the law: he was going to do what he wanted to do and, if Lisa loved him, she would have to accept his choices.
‘Lisa didn’t understand how Michael could disregard her feelings,’ said James Cruse, who knew her well at the time. ‘It was embarrassing for her to constantly defend his actions, always explaining that he was not a paedophile, he was misunderstood, he was a child at heart and, blah, blah, blah… the same stuff you always hear about the guy. He didn’t seem to care that it was hard on her. He just wanted to live his life the way he had always lived it. ‘What I do is none of your business,’ he told her. That really set her off. ‘How can you say that? Of course it’s my business,’ she told him. ‘You’re my husband.
You ‘re
my business.”
‘Why are you so selfish?’ Lisa hollered at Michael one evening in front of staff members at Neverland. They had just finished dinner and settled themselves in front of the fireplace, the blazing logs casting a warm glow over them. As they all talked, Michael slipped into the conversation that he was considering a vacation to France with the Cascio brothers from New Jersey, Eddie II and Frank. Lisa was stunned.
‘How did you get to be this way?’ she demanded, her eyes hard and condemning. ‘Do you care how that makes me look, you going on vacation with two kids? Don’t you care about me, at all?’
‘Me? Selfish?’ Michael asked, seeming dismayed. ‘But look at the moneyI give to charities. Why, Lisa! I love all the little children of the world.’
According to witnesses, Lisa stared at him, her mouth agape. ‘What does that have to do with anything?’ she countered. She was furious and getting more so by the second. ‘I’m talking about you and me, Michael. Not,
all the little children of the world
. In fact,’ she concluded, ‘you are the most selfish person I have ever known.’
Michael grimaced, as if struck in the stomach. Quick tears sprung to his eyes. No one had ever talked to him like that before, not since Joseph, anyway.
‘Oh, what’s the use?’ Lisa asked, ignoring his hurt. ‘You don’t get it, do you? The little children of the world,’ she repeated, angrily. ‘I can’t even believe you would say that to me.’
‘I got into this whole “I’m going to save you” thing,’ Lisa admitted in 2003. ‘I got some romantic idea in my head I could save him and we could save the world. I thought all that stuff he was doing, philanthropy and the children thing and all of that, was awesome. OK.
Hello
. I was delusionary.’
Later, when Michael recounted the incident to another associate, he said of his wife, ‘Man, she’s so mean to me. I’m like, why are you being such a bitch to me? What’d I ever do to you?’
‘It’s too soon after your rehab, Mike,’ said the adviser. ‘This kind of conflict isn’t good for you. You should be working on staying drug-free.’
‘Eddie and Frank and I have been friends for years,’ Michael said, not seeming to hear his friend’s remarks. He shook his head in disbelief. ‘We’ve been all over the world together. It’s all innocent. Now, Lisa hates me because of it.’ He stopped, as if hit by a bolt of lightning. ‘Oh my God, she hates me. It’s Katherine and Joseph all over again, isn’t it?’
‘Look, forget about those Cascio kids,’ offered the adviser. ‘Come on, Mike. You can see them, any time. Why mess things up any more with your wife?’
‘Because I’m a grown man,’ Michael said as he rose to leave the room. ‘And I don’t need anyone’s permission to go on a vacation with my good friends. That’s why.’
Michael did have his vacation in Paris with Eddie and Frank Cascio, in July 1995… and without Lisa.