Elvis Takes a Back Seat (10 page)

I remember Mother flitting around, cleaning my house for me, bringing me raspberry Jell-O, sliced strawberries, and homemade chicken sandwiches. That was her way of trying to ease the pain when I came home from the hospital, my arms and womb empty—her way of helping me through those dark days when no words could have penetrated or healed the gaping wound in my heart.

“The tiny decisions we make each day,” Rae says, her words somehow harmonizing with the carousel music, “they seem insignificant, silly even. But they can change our
course. What's the saying about no controlling a bull, but put a little ring through his nose … ? That describes my life. And once God got a hold of me … once I let him have control …”

I'm not sure what she means. Doesn't God control everything? He's never asked for my consent. He certainly never asked my opinion on whether my father or Stu should live or die.

“But way before that happened,” Rae continues, “I met Elvis. It was really nothing. Insignificant in Elvis's life, I'm sure of that. Of course, I knew who Elvis was before we met. Everyone knew about Elvis.”

“Like Bono?” Ivy asks, her horse sliding up its pole.

“Who? Whoever,” Rae waves her hand. “No, no. Elvis was … like a god. Everyone knew of him, young and old. You didn't even need to know his last name. Just Elvis. You either loved him or hated him. Very polarizing. Most parents didn't care for him at all. They believed he was a bad influence. He redeemed himself somewhat by going into the Army and serving his country. He was patriotic. Some folks thought he'd disappear from the limelight, being out of the public eye for so long. But the Colonel handled his publicity well, kept his memory alive. And then it was 1961 when I came to Memphis. The morals were different from today. Yet things were changing. Elvis had recently come back from Germany. Memphis was energetic … alive.

“I was young, restless. Just seventeen. I wanted to be away, off on my own. A friend of mine had an uncle who lived in Memphis who said he'd hire us to work in his office. What was her name? Hedda Winningham.” Rae smiles to herself, as if lost in her own thoughts and memories. “We
had such fun in high school.” The fingers of one hand trace the shape of her nails on the other.

“So I followed her to Memphis. And we worked for her uncle, filing and doing secretarial things. I could type a little. We were foolish, looking for fun. She moved on to Nashville, I believe, and later married. Her name's … Polk now. Hedda Polk.”

She pauses as if lost in her own memories. Her gaze drifts, and she stares off as if she's watching a movie we can't see. Ivy glances at me with a worried look, but I give her a quick smile of reassurance.

“Heddie became friendly with a man at a radio station in Memphis,” Rae continues, her voice more mesmerizing than the tinny sound of the carousel song. “I believe he knew her uncle.” She waves her hand as if passing over information that is unimportant. “He had a friend. I can't remember his name now, but he knew Elvis. I mean, really knew Elvis. They were good friends. Elvis used to drop by and talk to him regularly at the radio station. So this guy invited Heddie to one of the parties over at Graceland. She was excited. Who wouldn't have been? But she was nervous, too. Worried. She dragged me along. Not that she had to drag me at all. Who wouldn't have wanted to go to Graceland? In those days I was …”

“Bold?”

“Bolder than I should have been.”

“So you went?”

“I did. And, of course, Elvis was there. It wasn't anything spectacular. No music sounding. No trumpets blaring.” She pauses with a smile and glances at the speaker perched high at the carousel's center where the lyrical music
tumbles out. “No bells. Yet it was magical. For me. He was beautiful. His eyes … and that mouth.” She sighs like a young teenager. “He was cocky but also humble. Nice and cordial. But jittery. He seemed nervous, which astounded me. Then he showed us around. He seemed so proud … not in a ‘look what I've got' way. More like amazement, like he still couldn't believe it himself. Like he feared he might wake up and find it was all a dream.

“I remember people were everywhere, crowding around him, laughing at everything he did or said, hanging onto his every word. It was kind of a disappointment actually.”

“Hard to live up to the hype,” Ivy says as if it's perfectly understandable. Maybe it is. How many times have I anticipated something, wanted something, only to be disappointed when I got it? Things that never lived up to the anticipation. Never filled the holes.

“Maybe that was it,” Rae agrees. “Graceland was big. At least, in those days it was big. I'm sure there are bigger houses built now. But then it seemed extraordinary. And Elvis. He was big, too. Charismatic. My senses were on overload. I was out of my league. I felt … I don't know …” She gestures toward her stomach, her hand trembling. “Uncomfortable. I wanted to tell those people to go home and leave Elvis alone. In some ways Elvis seemed like a little boy who needed someone to protect him. That was my sense of it all.”

“And that was it?” I ask.

“For that night. I went home. I'd met Elvis. What more could there be? I certainly wasn't a groupie. I wasn't looking to hang out at Graceland on a daily basis. And there was some dancer from Vegas hanging out with Elvis. And then later … maybe a week or so … he called.”

“He called you?” Ivy asks, gripping her horse's pole. She's started to understand how big Elvis was with a hotel and street named for him and myriad souvenir shops stuffed with his memorabilia.

“No. The friend … Heddie's friend from the radio station. He called. Elvis wanted to see me.” She puffs out her chest. “Actually, he'd rented a movie theater for that night. Elvis wanted me to come. Not Heddie. Well, she could … but he specifically wanted me there.”

“And you went, right?” Ivy asks.

“No. I had a date.”

“You didn't drop the guy for Elvis?” she asks, narrowing her gaze as if it would have been the biggest mistake Rae could have made.

Rae chuckles. “No. Of course not. He was more real than Elvis. Elvis was … like a dream. I didn't think anything could happen long term with a dream. Too surreal.”

Ivy nods. I feel the carousel beginning to slow. I fumble with my purse and find three more dollars. I don't want the ride to stop and disrupt Rae's story. As we pass the attendant, I wave the dollars at her. She comes over and stuffs the bills in her pocket. Then the carousel picks up speed once again.

“I told him I was sorry but I was busy. Maybe another time. I didn't think I would hear from Elvis again. Turning down the King … well, it didn't seem like anyone turned down Elvis.”

“And? Did he call?”

“The next time Elvis called. Himself.”

Ivy leans over her horse as it slides downward along the pole again. “And you went, right?”

She gives a secretive smile. “Now you know my story.”

“I don't think we've scratched the surface.”

The carousel slows once more. The attendant shrugs as we pass. “The kids,” she says, pointing toward a group of five waiting to board the carousel, “they want on.”

“It's enough,” Rae says. “Let's go to Graceland. You'll see who Elvis was. No ordinary man.”

And she, I realize, is no ordinary woman either.

Once back at the hotel, we walk across the street toward the graffiti-covered stone wall outside Graceland. I search surreptitiously for some enclave where an Elvis bust might be missing. Rae walks slowly, almost hesitantly. Ivy acts more like the tourists we are, her eyes darting all around as she gawks at the strange sights. She seems to feel better today after her high-carb breakfast, so I put my worries on hold.

When we finally reach the beginning of Graceland property, a woman with gray hair, openly weeping, writes a message to Elvis on the wall.

“What's with her?” Ivy asks.

“She loved the King of Rock 'n' Roll,” I offer as explanation, although it seems pretty odd to me to weep over a dead stranger. But maybe she knew the King, too. Then again, I don't see Rae weeping and carrying on. Maybe it's only displaced grief the woman feels for Elvis. Maybe it's easier
to weep over a legend, a tragic figure, than to face the pain in her own life.

Ivy keeps moving forward, but she glances back at the woman.

It takes only a few steps to reach the music-note gates, famous the world over. They stand open and seem smaller than I imagined. A guardhouse sits next to the entrance. The guard waves to a shuttle bus that drives through and up the lane toward the house. I get Ivy and Rae to stand in front of the stone wall and take their picture. The number of people milling around amazes me. How long has Elvis been dead? Thirty years? And still people clamor to be near him. I try to put it in perspective for Ivy.

”This many people aren't lining up to see Bruce Springsteen's or Paul McCartney's house.”

“They're not dead,” she says.

“All the more reason to go see their houses! I mean, you might catch a glimpse of them.”

“Whatever.”

“John Lennon … or Janis Joplin … they don't have this kind of following,” I add, determined to show her how important Elvis was. “Maybe you don't know who Lennon—”

“I know.”

“You know who John Lennon is?” Rae asks.

“Yeah,” she says in that teen tone that means
duh
.

It's a hot June day, sticky with humidity, as we cross the street again to the tour shuttle. With the hotel suite I bought a package deal with tickets to Graceland. So we pass the line of fans, which are a mixture of young and old, and enter the strange and bizarre world of Elvis—and Rae's past. Before we board the shuttle, we're handed earphones and an audio
system designed to dangle around our necks. It's a short drive to Graceland, where we get off the shuttle. We stand outside the front door on the driveway. There our fellow tourists take pictures of the house, the trees. One leans on the lion statue, but a staffer asks him politely not to touch. We're reminded to turn off the flash on our cameras.

“I don't know how,” a woman beside me laments.

“I bet I can figure it out,” a staffer says.

After a brief explanation of when the house was built and how Elvis purchased it for one hundred thousand dollars, we enter the house.

Rae walks slightly ahead of us, as if she belongs there, as if she's Priscilla Presley, with her chin tilted up, her expression closed, as if she expects someone to recognize her—or for Elvis to walk down the stairs and welcome her.

We stand in the hallway at the entrance of Graceland, jockeying for position to see the royal-blue dining room with its black marble floor and golden chairs. I imagine other famous stars sitting there with Elvis at the head of the table, enjoying the down-home cooking that he loved. On the other side is the living room with a long white couch and mirrored fireplace. At the end of the room are stained-glass peacocks bracketing a doorway that leads to the music room.

When our group begins to surge forward toward the kitchen, I touch Rae's shoulder. She turns, lifts one of her earphones. “Is it how you remember?” I ask.

“Some.” Her brow crinkles as she looks over each piece in the living room. “It's not the same piano. I remember a white baby grand with gold trim.” She rubs her hands together, making her charm bracelet jangle and her rings click against each other. “Things change.” She speaks in a
low tone as if she doesn't want anyone to hear her. “I didn't expect it to be the same. I have changed, too.”

* * *

THE GREEN SHAG carpet on the walls and ceiling cause Ivy's jaw to drop with disbelief at the over-the-top decor. Rae has a wry smile curving her mouth and an occasional shake of the head. Nothing seems to surprise her though.

Ivy shrugs at the TV room. “What's the big deal?”

I'm sure she's seen more high-tech movie rooms in her friends' homes. Ben's big-screen TV can play more than one channel at a time. But Ivy doesn't realize Elvis was way ahead of the technological curve. Remote control wasn't even widely available then.

Someone brushes my shoulder, and I step out of the way while tourists angle their cameras for a quick picture. The flash goes off and someone calls, “Turn off your flash, please.”

I keep looking for a giant pedestal where Elvis's bust could sit, like a king on his throne overseeing the throngs of admirers. A pedestal just waiting there vacant, expectant after all these years. I imagine a Grecian-style column, about waist high, broad and sturdy, made out of marble. A fitting place for a king. But there isn't a spot among all the outlandish decorations for the tackiness of the piece. It's an absurd anticipation but rather hopeful, or maybe selfish. I want the search for the bust's home to be over. I want to return to a normal life, whatever that is. For there is nothing normal or ordinary in what I'm doing.

“This is pimpin',” Ivy says.

I pause my audio. “What?”

“Pimpin',” she repeats, looking at the Jungle Room.

Surprised, I glance around, hoping others haven't heard. I can just imagine an ardent fan taking offense and starting a riot. “Elvis wasn't a …”—I lower my voice—“a pimp!”

I can hear Stu's outrage in my head and realize he would take offense, but there's no reason for me to be upset by her remark. Ivy simply blinks at me.

Rae joins us, taking off her earphones. “The seventies have returned, haven't they?” She glances purposefully at Ivy's bell-bottom hip-huggers.

“Take a picture, will you? Think Dad would let me decorate my room like this?” she asks.

“Doubt it.” I wrinkle my nose at the garish decor as I snap a picture sans flash. “It's truly horrible.”

“Don't be cruel,” Rae sings softly.

“Pimpin',” Ivy says again, her head bobbing like she's jamming to some rap song in her head. Then she punches a button on her audio system and moves away from us.

“She means, it's cool,” Rae explains at my stunned expression. “It's just a saying kids use now.”

How does she know this? And how am I so out of touch that an older woman has to explain teenage jargon to me?

“Oh,” I manage.

I would definitely not be a good mom to a teenager.

“Okay, well … I guess that's one way to say it.”

* * *

WE TOUR MOST of the house, what's open to the public anyway. I catch Rae looking longingly up the great stairwell. But no one goes into Elvis's private residence.

“Were you ever upstairs?” I ask.

Rae lifts the earphone away from her ear. I can hear the automated guide talking. She fumbles with the audio player and finally stops it. I repeat my question.

“Of course. It was probably redecorated since I was here. Elvis stayed upstairs much of the time.” She glances around at the crowd shuffling through his house. “Strangers … crowds made him nervous. There always seemed to be people everywhere. He'd stay upstairs and send someone down to see who was here, if it was safe for him to come down.”

“In his own house?” I ask as we walk past a wall of gold records. It's a dazzling tribute to all that Elvis contributed to the music scene and our culture. Yet apparently the gates out front did not protect him. He may have been the King of Rock 'n' Roll, but he wasn't even the king of his own castle.

“Sometimes he liked to make a grand entrance. Coming down that staircase in style.”

Ivy walks up to us in the carport. “I didn't see any place that could have been the spot for the bust.”

“Of course, it's been years since it disappeared,” I say. “They wouldn't have left an empty spot, would they?” I'm embarrassed now that that's exactly what I was hoping for— an empty space preserved with a framed marker explaining how the bust was stolen years ago and that there was still a reward for its return. A stupid hope.

“Should we ask?” Ivy suggests. “Like, hey, y'all been missing a butt-ugly Elvis head?”

I laugh. “Something like that. But who would we ask?”

Ivy waves toward a staffer.

“Ivy,” I call, but she ignores me and walks over to a man who is wearing all black. “I'm not so sure that's a good idea,” I say to Rae.

“It doesn't belong here,” she says.

“How do you know?” I ask, still watching Ivy, who looks more like she's flirting with the staffer than asking about Elvis.

“I know.”

“Then why'd we come?”

Rae smiles confidently. “Everyone should come to Graceland when they visit Memphis. It's like going to Mecca. Or the Wailing Wall.”

“The wailing what?” Ivy asks, walking back over to us.

“It's considered a holy place, a shrine,” Rae explains.

“There's been no bust stolen,” Ivy says. “So are we done here, or what?”

“We have to see his grave.” Rae steps toward the pool and the walkway leading toward the meditation garden. We follow after her. With a glance over my shoulder, I realize the staffers are watching us closely, as if we're looking to walk off with a piece of Graceland.

* * *

A RESPECTFUL, QUIET crowd has formed a line slowly moving past the grave of Elvis's grandmother. Once they reach Elvis's resting place and the eternal flame, they take pictures—flash photography is allowed here—and take their time reading the long epitaph written there. Some even whisper, “Good-bye,” or, “I love you.” Then they pay their
respects to Elvis's father and mother, the line disbanding there as the guests linger, not wanting to end their stay at Graceland.

The woman ahead of us carries a bouquet of wilting flowers. Tears run down her face. The couple behind us in line giggle. Ivy keeps asking questions about the Moorish stained-glass windows we pass as we walk along the brick pathway, getting closer and closer to Elvis's grave. I glance at Rae, nervous for her seeing the site for the first time. But she looks calm except for a slight plucking of her sleeve.

I ask, “Are you okay?”

“Sure. It's not the same as you, Claudia.”

“What do you mean?”

“When you visit Stu's grave, you mourn him. For yourself. You're in the midst of grief. I grieved for Elvis many years before he died. I grieved his loss of freedom. I grieved that I couldn't help him.”

“I couldn't help Stu either.”

She clutches my hand, and I realize she understands my loss more than I ever imagined.

“Jeeze, it's hot.” An overweight man ahead of Rae swipes his forearm along his face. “I gotta get me a beer. Are you ready, Betty?”

Betty elbows him in the gut. “What a tragedy.” She wipes tears from her eyes and lays a bouquet of flowers along the wrought-iron fence. “So young.”

“Boy, did I love him.” A woman behind us smacks gum. “I did. He loved me, too.”

I glance back at the woman with an old-lady hairdo sprayed into place. Others start looking at her too.

“He did,” the woman argues with the silent accusations. She readjusts her fanny pack around her wide waist. “In 1970, I saw Elvis in Houston.”

“Where?” someone asks.

“At the Astrodome.” She lifts her chin indignantly, as if irritated her story has been challenged.

“In concert?”

She props her hands on her ample hips. “Well, I weren't there to see football.”

“He said he loved you?”

“Sure 'nuff. I was up on stage. Yes, sir, I was. Crawled my way up onto the stage. The guards didn't take kindly to that. So they grabbed me and started carrying me off. I hollered for Elvis. And he looked over, saw me, and did that kinda secretive smile of his. I yelled, ‘I love you, Elvis!' and he said, ‘I love you, too, baby.'”

Her story silences those around her into submission. Apparently, none of the others saw Elvis in concert or had the nerve to jump on stage to get close to him. I nudge Rae, wondering what all these people would say if she told them she'd actually
known
Elvis, spoken to him. I notice she's smiling secretly to herself. But I know she won't share her story. Some secrets are best kept private.

The brazen woman's companion readjusts his baseball cap. “I didn't care much for his music.”

The Elvis attacker glares at him. “Well, I never!”

“Sissy boy, is what I thought.” Another man postures beside them, already edging toward the exit.

“He weren't no sissy,” pipes up a burly man wearing a leather jacket like it isn't pushing 90 degrees in the shade. “He had a black belt.”

“Two,” someone else says.

Then I realize Rae's standing at the foot of Elvis's grave. The splashing of water falling in the fountain behind the semicircle of four graves swallows the words of those chattering around us. I give her room, remembering when I stood beside Stu's grave for the first time. I read the engraved stone over and over as if that would make me finally believe. But the impact of losing him came at night when I crawled into bed alone, when I ate meals alone, when I wanted to tell Stu something and realized he was gone. I imagine Rae's loss was felt long ago when something happened and Elvis no longer called, no longer remained in her life. Loss, I'm beginning to understand, comes in many shapes and sizes, but the emptiness throbs with the same beat.