Lisa Marie Confronts Michael in Hospital
When in September 1995 Michael and Lisa appeared together at the MTV Awards, she sat at his side looking pissed off and miserable. She was tired of arguing, tired of trying to save him from himself. She had recently called Katherine Jackson to ask what she thought she should do about Michael’s insistence that he continue to have young boys in his life. ‘I want to save this marriage, but I also want to save Michael,’ she said, according to what Katherine later recalled to a friend. ‘He’s just looking for trouble. What can I do? This whole thing is freaking me out.’
‘I don’t know what you can do, but I know what you can’t do: you can’t try to tell him what to do,’ Katherine advised her daughter-in-law. She told her what many people already knew: ‘Michael does what he wants to do.’ She also suggested that Lisa call Johnnie Cochran, saying that the attorney might be the one to address the issue with Michael. Lisa called Johnnie. ‘My God! It’s all so innocent, this business with kids,’ Johnnie told her. He suggested that if she wanted to save her marriage she would ‘have to let Michael be who Michael is.’
‘You think she could have hid it for just one night in front of the cameras,’ Michael later complained to his mother about Lisa’s glum appearance on the MTV Awards. ‘But, no, not her. She puts her feelings right out there, doesn’t she? She’s so open.’
‘But that’s what you liked about her,’ Katherine reminded him.
‘Yeah, but now it’s working against me,’ Michael observed.
Despite the fact that their marriage seemed in trouble, Michael was still pushing for Lisa to become pregnant. Whenever he brought up the subject of having children, though, Lisa acted as if it wasn’t a serious issue for them. ‘I mean it,’ he told her, according to a later recollection. ‘I’m very serious. I want us to have children. I don’t think you’re hearing me,’ he said.
However, Lisa had heard him loud and clear. She had two children with Danny Keough. She knew how much she loved them, could never live a single day without them. Projecting ahead, she wondered what would happen to the child they would have if the marriage ended. ‘When I imagined having a child with him,’ she confirmed in 2003, ‘all I could ever see was a custody battle nightmare.’ Also, after getting to know him better and watching his day-to-day interactions with people, she became convinced that he was too emotionally immature to raise a child. ‘I think
he
needs a parent,’ she told one confidante, ‘and maybe shouldn’t be one himself, yet.’ However, she wouldn’t tell him all of that, at the time. Instead, she just hoped he would give up on the idea, at least for the time being.
Also, by this time, the heated physical intimacy Lisa had enjoyed with Michael had cooled. It could have only lasted so long, without real communication between them. She decided to use their waning physical intimacy as an excuse. ‘I think we have to have sex in order for me to get pregnant,’ she told him, according to what she later recalled. ‘And you know what? I ain’t doin’ it.”
Michael wasn’t convinced that he and Lisa had to engage in sexual activity in order to have a family of their own. He wanted children; that was his chief goal and he had made it clear. The question, then, became how to achieve it. Finally, one day over breakfast he told her, ‘Look, my friend Debbie said she will get pregnant and have my baby. If you won’t do it, then
she
will. How about that?’
Lisa didn’t know how to take Michael’s statement. Was it a challenge? A threat? Or just a fact? It certainly wasn’t the kind of news most wives would welcome hearing from their husbands: if you don’t have my baby, my nurse will. She was amazed by the seriousness of his tone. Who would then raise this child? She and Michael? Debbie? Or, just Michael, alone? Life with Michael Jackson was getting a little weird for her, as if it hadn’t been weird enough up until that time. She met his direct gaze calmly. ‘No kidding?’ she remarked. ‘Well, cool, then. That’s fine with me,’ she said in a controlled tone. ‘Tell her to go ahead and do it.’
The weeks slipped into months. By the winter of 1995, Lisa and Michael weren’t even speaking, and not because Lisa didn’t want to communicate with him, but because she simply could not find him. She didn’t know his whereabouts, only that he was not at Neverland – and no one in his camp would give her any information. After spending about a week trying to find him, there was a floral delivery from him at her home in Hidden Hills: dozens of red roses with a card that read, ‘Love, Michael.’ Under the circumstances, the gesture made no sense. Exasperated, she threw the flowers into the trash.
At about this time, she was already furious with him because of a cover story in
TV Guide
during which he was quoted as saying that she told him Elvis once had a nose job. ‘He was quoting me, “Presley told me Elvis had a nose job,” which is absolute bullshit,’ she now recalls. ‘I read that and I threw it across the kitchen. “I told you
what?
”’
‘It was getting nasty,’ she recalled, ten years later. ‘I was ready to kill him, I swear to God.’
In December 1995, Michael finally returned to Neverland. Priscilla Presley decided to pay him a surprise visit to find out what was going on with her son-in-law. ‘When she arrived, she saw Michael in the living room playing with about a dozen babies, all crawling about, some laughing, some crying,’ recalled Monica Pastelle. ‘It was like a big nursery, with a grown man in the middle of it all, seeming in a state of bliss. Though nothing wrong was going on, she was flabbergasted. It was so unsettling, Priscilla left, immediately.’
Lisa was speechless when her mother confronted her about what she’d seen.
A week later, Michael went to New York to begin rehearsals for a concert at the Beacon Theater, ‘Michael Jackson – One Night Only’, which was scheduled to be broadcast on cable television to 250 million viewers on 9 December. On 6 December, he collapsed during a practice session and was hospitalized at New York’s Beth Israel North Hospital. His doctors said he was suffering from heart arrhythmia, or irregular heartbeat prompted by severe dehydration, gastroenteritis and a chemical imbalance affecting his liver and kidneys. He also had a viral infection. Yet earlier in the day, he seemed fine. Marcel Marceau, who was going to make an appearance on the HBO programme during Michael’s performance of ‘Childhood’, had been at the rehearsal when Michael collapsed. ‘He was so full of energy, in absolutely wonderful condition,’ said the mime, who turned away for a moment during Michael’s practice session of ‘Black and White’ under the hot and blinding lights.
‘I heard silence,’ said the mime, ‘and everything stopped. I looked and he was on the floor.’
By the time medics appeared on the site, Michael’s heartbeat was irregular and his blood pressure low. He had on so much makeup, they had to check his pallor by the color of his chest when they lifted his shirt.
As soon as he was checked into the hospital, Michael’s press people telephoned Lisa in Los Angeles and, with frantic explanations, begged her to fly to her husband’s side. ‘Hell, no,’ was her response. ‘Screw him. I’m not going. Why should I?’
She wasn’t going to get out of it that easily, however. Michael’s collapse had made big news: ‘Jacko on his Backo’ screamed the front page of the
New York Post
. The hospital even set up a telephone number with daily, automatic message updates on his condition. The media had assembled in front of the hospital, waiting for his wife to arrive to be with him. His ‘people’ then badgered her ‘people’ about Michael’s image and how it would ‘look’ if his wife wasn’t at his side. After all, even Diana Ross had shown up. Finally – and surprisingly, to her friends, anyway – Lisa gave in. Arriving at the hospital the next day, wearing a black pea coat and sunglasses, she was whisked through a side entrance.
It’s possible that Michael really did want Lisa to be with him. However, when she got there he must have been sorry she’d agreed to the public relations manoeuvre. She showed up with fire in her eyes. When she walked into the room, the first thing that hit Lisa were all the framed posters of Shirley Temple as a child-star, Mickey Mouse and Topo Gigio, the strange, little puppet-mouse popular from the old
Ed Sullivan Show
in the 1950s and 1960s. When Lisa looked down at Michael, he appeared to be on his death bed; it seemed as if he had tubes coming out of every limb. He reminded her, she would later say, of the pathetic creature from
E. T
. at the end of the movie when the alien has taken a turn for the worst. As she stood there, ‘E.T.’ gazed up at her weakly and, mustering all his strength, managed to say, ‘Hi, Lisa. How are you?’
Lisa wasn’t moved. She didn’t care much about Michael’s health, not at that moment, anyway. She suspected that he wasn’t suffering from ‘exhaustion’ or ‘dehydration’. He had long ago confided in her about his panic attacks. According to those who know her well, she figured that he’d suffered another and, based on his destabilized condition, that it had been quite a jolt to his system. Surely, though, it wasn’t because of the upcoming concert, she speculated. He’d made many such appearances, why would this particular one cause such a reaction? The broadcast had actually now been postponed indefinitely, costing both Michael and HBO a fortune. (It would never happen.) Whatever was going on with him was serious. Now that Michael was a captive audience, she wanted to confront him. So where had he been? Why was he so anxious? Most importantly, where did she stand with him?
Michael usually tries to avoid confrontation. So, for his irate wife to barge into his safe, hospital haven was upsetting. His heart must have been thundering in his chest.
Making matters more tense was the fact that the Cascio brothers had just left the room five minutes earlier. Had Lisa seen them? It was difficult to tell; her face was that impassive. But it’s likely she wouldn’t even have recognized them now. Still, it was a close call.
Lisa closed the door behind her. She and Michael then engaged in a private and, judging from the shouting going on in the room – hers, not his – heated conversation. ‘I’m like a lion, I roar,’ she would say in 2003. ‘I won’t be a victim. I don’t sulk, I get angry. I go immediately into retaliation.
‘I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with him,’ she recalled. ‘I started asking questions, and it was always a different story. He said I was causing trouble and stirring up problems. He told me, “You’re making my heart rate go up,” and asked me to leave. I said, “Good. I want out. This is insane, all of it.”’
When the door to Michael’s room opened, Lisa burst out as if shot from a cannon, past everyone in the hall and straight to the elevator. ‘Mrs Jackson,’ exclaimed one of the doctors. ‘My goodness! Your husband cannot be upset like this. He’s much too fragile. If you’re going to do this, you’ll not be able to visit him.’
Lisa gave him a sharp look.
Michael’s mother, who had been pacing in the hallway, regarded her daughter-in-law intensely. She could not fathom that Lisa would fly all the way from Los Angeles to New York just to fight with her son. Janet, who had also rushed to be at her brother’s side, had just gone to the ladies’ room. As Lisa stood waiting for the elevator, Katherine walked up to her and exploded in stunned disbelief. ‘What is
wrong
with you, Lisa,’ she hissed. ‘You are so
spoiled
. I can’t believe that you would do this to Michael.’ At that moment, the elevator opened and Lisa got into it. She turned, faced Katherine and gave her a critical look. Luckily for Katherine, the elevator’s doors then slammed closed between them.
Lisa wanted to see Michael the next day. ‘Absolutely not,’ Michael’s handlers told her. There had been a meeting with Jackson family members and it was decided that Lisa was an antagonizing presence in Michael’s life, and that he should now be protected from her, at all costs. Furious, Lisa went back to Los Angeles.
Perhaps a clue to Michael’s behaviour – his distancing himself from Lisa and his subsequent, apparent panic attack – can be found in analysing a chain of events from late 1995. It would be many years later that Debbie Rowe would reveal that she became pregnant that December. Michael had certainly given Lisa fair warning that Debbie would have his baby if she wouldn’t do it. ‘Tell her to go ahead and do it,’ Lisa had said. If she was being sarcastic, perhaps Michael didn’t catch the mockery.
Did Lisa know about the pregnancy? ‘I don’t think Debbie even knew yet,’ observed Monica Pastelle. ‘I think by the time Michael was on his back in the hospital, she was only a couple of weeks’ pregnant. As for Lisa, if she had known, do you think Michael would have been still drawing breath when she left that hospital room?’
It certainly appears either that Michael was a fast worker when he realized his marriage was in trouble or that he had a master plan to father a child, once and for all, which did not involve his wife. Some have said that Michael and Debbie were intimate. Others have said Debbie is ‘not his type’ and insist that they underwent the process of artificial insemination shortly before Michael ended up in the hospital. Since no one who knows them well enough to be privy to such information wants to discuss it, Debbie’s pregnancy remains one of Michael’s most sensitive secrets. ‘I can only tell you that I did not discuss it with him,’ said one of his advisers. ‘I did not want any more information about any of it.’
When Michael was released from the hospital after a week, he went off to Euro-Disney in France to recuperate. He must have had at least a half-dozen children with him, judging from photographs taken on his vacation.
On 18 January 1996, I appeared on CNN to announce that Lisa Marie Presley had filed for divorce from Michael Jackson. In her petition, she noted the ‘Date of Separation’ as 10 December 1995, just after she saw Michael in the hospital. ‘This person is one of the biggest entertainers out there,’ Lisa told
Newsweek
in 2003. ‘He is not stupid. He’s very charming when he wants to be, and when you go into his world you step into this whole other realm. I could tell you all about the craziness – all these things that were odd, different, evil or not cool – but it still took me two and a half years to get my head out of it.’
In March 1996, Debbie Rowe suffered a miscarriage. ‘I was just devastated,’ she has said. ‘I thought I would never be able to have a baby, and I really wanted to have his. Michael was there to console me the whole time.’
It’s fascinating, in retrospect, that Debbie’s pregnancy and subsequent miscarriage – as well as her very existence in Michael’s life – had still escaped public scrutiny. It seems incredible that someone of Michael’s celebrity status could be married to one woman and planning a baby with another… and no one in the media would catch on to any of it. How, one wonders, did he manage it? ‘Carefully,’ responded someone in Michael’s camp, only half-kidding. ‘Very carefully.’ Or, perhaps not very well at all, it could be argued… if, in fact, he had a panic attack over it.
Michael’s divorce from Lisa was finalized on 20 August 1996. As part of the settlement, Lisa received ten per cent of royalties from Jackson’s
HIStory
album. According to the agreement, she was allowed to write a tell-all book about her marriage, if she ever chose to do so; she did not sign a so-called ‘confidentiality agreement’. At the time, though, Lisa just wanted to get on with her life and career. She said that she had great regard for Michael and refused to speak critically of him. She knew that he wasn’t entirely venal… she just didn’t know, at this point, what to think of him. So, she chose to preserve her dignity by keeping sacred their private life together. Seven years later, though, in the spring of 2003, Lisa began to discuss her frustration as Michael’s wife during promotion of her long-anticipated debut album,
To Whom It May Concern
, on Capitol Records.
Michael was deeply conflicted by the end of his marriage to Lisa, his heart flooded with despair. Never before had he connected with a woman, or maybe even another person, on the level that he had with her. She had been there when he most needed her, during the dark days of allegations and drug abuse. ‘She’s like a force of nature,’ he said of her, ‘always there for me. I don’t know how I’ll be without her.’
He also had a strong sexual connection to her, and that had been a first for him. Previously, he hadn’t been able to open himself up, feel uninhibited and truly, physically intimate with anyone. However, for some reason, he was able to let himself go with Lisa. Who knows why? It’s easy to be sceptical of Michael’s relationship with her, but doing so risks ignoring his obvious humanity. Despite the plastic surgeries and maddening friendships with boys, and all of the rest of the eccentric behaviour that goes into making Michael Jackson such a strange individual, he is still a human being with emotions, feelings and a beating heart – and, somehow, Lisa Marie Presley was the one to truly touch it, to truly affect him. ‘I’m afraid it will never happen for me, again,’ he said at the time. ‘I’m scared to death that it’s over for me, now.’ Indeed, it was difficult for him to let it go.
Michael spent a couple of weeks lamenting what had occurred with Lisa. ‘Lisa said that the part of him that is critical of himself – the beaten child part of him – really kicked in after the divorce was finalized,’ said Monica Pastelle. ‘He wanted to call and talk to his best friend, her. He didn’t want to let go. She needed space, though. She really needed time away from him. She felt that he had really screwed with her mind, and she got sick and her body started breaking down after the divorce. She poured her life into him. Now, she needed to reclaim it for herself. He had a hard time with that.’
In the end, Michael Jackson had no choice but to go on alone. He was a survivor, he told himself. He had music to work on, career commitments – a huge, world tour coming up with a show that, as always, demanded his complete focus. Besides, he and Lisa had different goals in life. He wanted to raise children; she already had two, and had made it clear that she didn’t want any more with him. Michael wasn’t used to waiting for other people to catch up with him and with his goals. When Debbie Rowe said she would have his baby, he jumped at the opportunity. With glacial determination replacing his despondency, he was ready to push onward. That had always been his way; at the age of thirty-eight, he wasn’t going to change.