Michael’s New Family
On 13 November 1996, Michael Jackson sat down at a grand piano in his two-bedroom suite at the Sheraton on the Park Hotel in Sydney. With a flourish, he played the Wagner march known as ‘Here Comes the Bride’. Michael had on a creamy foundation and transparent powder that made his face almost stark white. He had extra eyeliner on his lids, emphasizing their almond shape; his eyes stood out like dark coals. He highlighted his nose and cheekbones with bronze tones. His eyebrows were tweezed and darkened. He had on a black hat and one long curl framing each side of his face. Also, he appeared to have fake sideburns. The total effect was nothing short of jaw-dropping, in that Disneyland sort of way.
From one of the other rooms came Debbie Rowe, six months’ pregnant, wearing black and holding a small arrangement of flowers. It had just been ten days since the world knew that he was about to become a father and now, thanks to his mother, he was about to become a husband, again. As fifteen of their friends watched, thirty-eight-year-old Michael and thirty-seven-year-old Debbie – both wearing black – were wed in a simple ceremony. Michael’s best man was a new friend of his named Anthony – who was eight years old. Michael identified him as a nephew. (However, unless there are relatives unknown to other family members, he doesn’t seem to have a nephew by that name.) Michael further explained that the boy had been depressed by the death of one of his parents. ‘I brought him with me to cheer him up,’ he explained.
As they stood in the suite, decorated, wall to wall, with exotic orchids, roses and deep pink lilies, Michael presented Debbie with a $100,000 diamond and platinum ring. After being pronounced man and wife, they exchanged an affectionate look and a brief, tentative kiss. Debbie seemed tense, holding herself stiffly. When they drew apart, Michael held her away from him, gazing deeply into her face. He then leaned in and kissed her on the neck. ‘You are so beautiful,’ he said, holding her with his eyes. ‘More beautiful than I ever imagined the mother of my child would be. Thank you so much, Debbie. Thank you so much for being… you.’ It was a touching moment.
The next evening, Michael and Anthony attended the Australian premiere of Michael’s short film
Ghosts
and walked side by side in front of the clicking and whirring cameras. Michael looked content in one of his military outfits and a black silk surgical mask. Anthony, who wore a simple, short-sleeved black shirt, was dark-haired, good-looking… and, in the opinion of most observers, a dead-ringer for Jordie Chandler.
Meanwhile, Debbie was in her hotel suite making long-distance telephone calls to friends in the United States. Marsha Devlin, another one of her Van Nuys neighbours at the time, recalled that Debbie told her she needed her to pay her telephone bill for her. ‘She had left the States in such a hurry, she forgot to pay it,’ said Marsha. ‘It was disconnected already; she owed back money for the bill. If she had money from Michael by this time, you sure would never know it. She told me she had about three thousand dollars in the bank.’
When Marsha asked, Debbie told her that Michael did not stay with her in her suite at the Sheraton on the Park Hotel the night before they wed, nor on their wedding night. Instead, she said, he stayed with ‘an assistant’ in another room, ‘so that I could get some rest. I was exhausted.’ Less than a week later, Debbie returned to Los Angeles, never having slept with Michael in Sydney.
The day before he married Debbie Rowe, Michael telephoned Lisa Marie Presley in Los Angeles to tell her of his plans. He still cared deeply about her, he said, and didn’t want her to ‘read about the wedding in the papers’. He felt dreadful, he told her, about the way their relationship ended, ‘with us saying mean things to each other. And now I’m moving on,’ he told her, according to a later recollection, ‘but I don’t really feel that it’s right, not without your blessing.’ In fact, those close to Michael say that he was so anxious about his marriage to Debbie, he was jittery and would begin to sob at the slightest provocation, his tears flowing, unchecked. No wonder he was worn out; his life had been filled with such confusion and anxiety for as many years as he could remember, the stress of it keenly felt, especially while on the road with yet another strenuous tour. He was bone tired; getting up on that stage and executing his trademark dance steps had become more of an ordeal with each passing year. ‘I’m getting too old for this shit,’ he said.
Lisa didn’t know how to react to Michael’s telephone call. She still loved him, she said, but she was adamant that they would never be together, again. Therefore, he should go forth and do whatever he wanted to do with his life, with Debbie Rowe, or anyone else. She gave him her ‘blessing’. Anyway, it was time for her to move past the madness of his world, to stop trying to fathom the unfathomable. After she and Michael ended their marriage, she fell into a serious health decline, ‘the worst two years of my life,’ as she put it. Privately, she said that she hoped he was content in his new life, but she knew him too well. His sadness sprang from so many years of distrust and unhappiness, how could a marriage to someone with whom he wasn’t in love possibly end his misery, even if she was having a baby for him?
Lisa may have been concerned, but much of the public and media’s reaction to Michael’s second marriage was just cynical. It appeared that he married a person he didn’t love, who was having a baby that may or may not have been his, or maybe conceived artificially. ‘Please respect our privacy,’ Michael said in a statement, ‘and let us enjoy this wonderful and exciting time.’ As for Debbie, many people didn’t know what to make of her, either. On its front page, the
Daily Mirror
published a photograph of her on a hotel balcony in Sydney cradling her head in her hands in dismay, probably expressing exasperation at the presence of an army of paparazzi, below. However, the bold headline suggested otherwise. It read: OH
G
OD!
I’
VE JUST MARRIED
M
ICHAEL
J
ACKSON
.
Prince Michael Jackson, Michael’s son, was born in February 1997 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. (He is now known as Prince Michael I. Michael’s grandfather and great-grandfather were both named Prince.) He and Debbie cut the umbilical cord together. The baby was weighed. He spent five hours in intensive care with a minor problem, and then Michael rushed him out of the hospital and off to Neverland.
When Debbie was released from Cedars, she recuperated at a friend’s house.
‘I have been blessed beyond comprehension,’ Michael said in a statement, ‘and I will work tirelessly at being the best father I can be. I appreciate that my fans are elated, but I hope that everyone respects the privacy that Debbie and I want and need for our son. I grew up in a fish bowl and I will not allow that to happen to my child. Please give my son his privacy.’
Michael and Debbie posed for photographs with Prince in March, at the Four Seasons Hotel. Though the poses seemed warm and Michael and Debbie appeared to be proud parents, it had actually been the first time Debbie had seen the baby since the day she gave birth to him six weeks earlier. She was smuggled into the hotel room, given the infant to hold, told to smile for the camera with Michael… and then, her work done, thanked profusely by Michael and sent on her way. She did seem very loving to her child – who was light-skinned with black hair and dark brown eyes – during the time she cradled him in her arms. No doubt, however, she would not want to have become too attached to Prince. It would just make matters more difficult for her. Under ordinary circumstances, a surrogate mother would never be called upon to have to pose for pictures with the baby she had given to someone else to raise. However Debbie Rowe, always amenable to whatever was asked of her, was in a different world… Michael’s world.
A woman who worked as a chef at Neverland recalls the way Prince was nursed during his first six months. ‘Debbie was not a significant presence,’ she said. ‘We never saw her. The baby was cared for by a team of six nannies and six nurses. They all worked eight hours each, in shifts, so the baby would always have two nurses and two nannies by his side. They were kept under constant video surveillance, which was monitored by members of Jackson’s security team. The nannies all have special training. The day-team do exercise drills with the baby to build up his strength. The night-team began reading and singing to Prince when he was only three weeks old. When Prince cries, he seemed to be calling for his mama. It was eerie, almost as if the baby didn’t have a mother at all. There are no pictures of Debbie. Mr Jackson has just one photo by his bed, and that’s of Lisa Marie as a child in the year when the two of them met.’
She said Prince sometimes slept in Michael’s room in a crib filled with stuffed animals. ‘The room was more like a nursery than a room for a grown man,’ she recalled. ‘There were two life-sized figures outside, like a toy shop. One is a boy scout, the other is a girl in a British policeman’s hat. Inside there was Peter Pan stuff on the walls and a bunch of Nintendo games we were told not to touch.’
One nanny who worked at Neverland said, ‘There was a feeling of being a bit under siege. Nevertheless, the baby did get exceptional care. We had to measure the air quality in his room once every hour. When we fed him, all the utensils had to be boiled first and could only be used for one type of food. They were all thrown away after a single use.’ Prince was given new toys every day and, apparently for sanitary reasons, Michael instructed his staff to discard his ‘old’ toys after Prince has gone to bed. ‘Debbie Rowe really had no input,’ the nanny said. ‘I saw her maybe three times and she seemed very sullen.’
For Debbie, one perk of being Michael’s wife was the opportunity to rub shoulders with the rich and famous. However, sometimes she didn’t rub as closely as she might have hoped. For instance, she had been anxious to meet Elizabeth Taylor. However, Elizabeth was annoyed at Michael at this time because Michael had never introduced Debbie to her, and she couldn’t fathom that he would go off and marry someone she didn’t know. Michael told Debbie to go ahead and try to meet Liz if she wanted to, but that it wouldn’t be a good time for him to be an intermediary. Debbie attempted to contact Elizabeth, telephoning her a few times. At one point, she gave Elizabeth’s secretary her mailing address, so that Elizabeth would have it in her appointment book. One day, she received a note from the screen star: ‘Thank you for your interest in my career. Enclosed, please find a signed photo. With affection, [signed] Elizabeth Taylor.’
‘Debbie laughed when she got it,’ said Tanya Boyd. ‘She thought it was the funniest thing in the world. She even framed it! “So close,” she said of Elizabeth Taylor, “yet so, so far.”’