Baby, Let's Play House_ Elvis Presley and the Women Who Loved Him - Alanna Nash [100]
Elvis demanded complete control in his relationships, but perhaps another reason he persisted was because Jackie looked a bit like him. Their hair color was the same, they had those light eyes, and they were the only surviving children of their parents, their mothers both having lost a baby at birth. For a brief moment, it might have seemed like Jessie and Elvis, reunited. Even Jackie’s name, like June’s, started with the right letter.
By the time Jackie left the house, “There was definitely some romantic chemistry going on between the two of us. I didn’t think about Elvis being a big, famous entertainer. He was just the sweet boy that I was in love with.”
Of course, her familiarity with the family had begun the day before. Gladys admired a stick rhinestone pin that Marguerite wore, and Mrs. Rowland “sold” it to her for a penny, and then showed Gladys how to store a set of sterling silverware Elvis had just bought her. After that, Gladys led Jackie through the house. “I took pictures of Elvis’s bedroom, his clothes closet, his messy bathroom—anything that a little fourteen-year-old girl would think to do.”
However, twenty-one-year-old Elvis did not treat Jackie as the child she was. He sang his new song, “Hound Dog,” and started tickling her (“You know how boys love to tease and pinch girls”), calling her Goosey. From there, it grew more intense. “He said, ‘You’ve got the most beautiful eyes I’ve ever seen,’ and he was really tickling me, kissing me on the cheek and the ears. Something just clicked between us, and that was it.”
Gladys, already guessing how Elvis would react to Jackie, had taken her alone that first day, auditioning her, as she did the older girls in whom Elvis took an interest. “She sat me down and asked me if I had a boyfriend, and what kind of grades I made in school, and did I believe in Jesus. She really asked me very personal questions, but, of course, at the time, I didn’t think those were personal questions. I answered them, and I was happy to answer them, because I was proud of what I’d done in school and in my church.”
Even at fourteen, Jackie had the sense that she was being interviewed to see if she measured up. It was almost as if Gladys were screening Jackie in an attempt to find a younger version of herself for her son. And Gladys was direct with her about her competition.
“She knew about the ‘traveling girls,’ as I call them, and she explained to me that Elvis hadn’t sown all of his wild oats yet. It didn’t bother me, because she said I still had time to grow up.”
In fact, when Jackie returned to Jacksonville, she was convinced that she would see Elvis again soon, and that he wanted it as much as she did.
In a few weeks, an envelope arrived at Jackie’s home. Elvis, who wrote few letters, had invited her and her mother to his show at Jacksonville’s Florida Theatre the following month. “This letter was written to Mrs. Rowland and Jackie, and it’s signed with Mrs. Presley’s name. But it’s Elvis’s handwriting. He started to sign his own name, but he knew that was improper. You just didn’t do things with an underage girl.”
The day after the Russwood concert, Elvis gave himself a well-earned three-week vacation. It was his first real time off since becoming a national sensation. He’d always had trouble sleeping, and now sleep sometimes seemed forever out of reach, his foot just going all the time under the sheets.
He drove down to Tupelo on July 7, and then two days later showed up unexpectedly at June Juanico’s door in Biloxi, with Red West, Gene and Junior Smith, and Arthur Hooten in tow. He was living in the moment now, not really planning much of anything, except to hang with his pals, maybe do a little fishing, a little sightseeing. He put the whole party up at the Sun ’N’ Sand Hotel Court, and then moved to a villa at the Gulf Hills Dude Ranch resort in Ocean Springs, Mississippi. But after fans keyed messages into the paint of his new car, he rented a private home.
June was walking down Howard Avenue when he arrived, never dreaming he was anywhere near.