Baby, Let's Play House_ Elvis Presley and the Women Who Loved Him - Alanna Nash [338]
Elvis’s weight had ballooned well over two hundred pounds again, but more disturbing was his bloat. He looked as if he might pop and spiral heavenward. More disturbing, his roundness made him appear as if he were morphing into Gladys. It was as if she had begun to reclaim him.
On the way to play his Vegas dates that August, he again had trouble breathing on the plane. It made a forced landing in Dallas, and after recuperating in a motel for several hours, he continued on.
Joyce Bova slipped into Vegas with Janice, to see if the rumors about his appearance were true. “I thought he must be sick. That show was such a sad sight. He even had trouble trying to straddle a chair.”
Joan Blackman had also heard reports, and went to Vegas to see if she could make a connection. “I was just so taken aback. I had changed, too, but when I first saw him, I was stunned. It wasn’t just the weight. I saw something that made me very sad. I felt like something had been taken away.”
Three days later, the Colonel canceled the rest of the engagement, and Elvis went home to be hospitalized again, this time for multiple ailments: his colon, a fatty liver, a high cholesterol count, general fatigue, and depression. Once again, Linda stayed with him in the hospital. Marian Cocke, the motherly supervisor of nursing services, came by to see him, and when Dr. Nick suggested that Elvis continue his twenty-four-hour home care, Elvis asked for Mrs. Cocke, whom he had previously met during his January stay, to supplement Tish Henley.
However, watching over Elvis, Vernon, and Minnie Mae seemed taxing for even two women, so Marian, who never accepted a salary for it, suggested alternating shifts with yet another nurse from the hospital, Kathy Seamon. The night before Elvis’s discharge, he signed a picture of himself “To Mrs. Cocke, the sex symbol of the Babtist [sic],” and when Jerry cracked a joke about “Cocke and Seamon,” Marian picked up an entire pitcher of ice water and poured it down Jerry’s shirt. Elvis, who had already surprised the nurse with a white 1976 Pontiac Grand Prix, laughed until he got tears in his eyes, and told Marian she was going to fit in just fine at Graceland.
Near the end of that summer, 1975, he was melancholy again and called Sheila at 4 A.M. “I want you to come home,” he said. What did he mean? She was home. “No, I mean Memphis. I want you at Graceland.” There was a great long silence, and then Sheila said she needed some time to think about it. She never really knew if he loved her or if she were just one of the girls, and now she was with Jimmy, and that seemed like the place to stay. She didn’t really tell him that, though, just asked about Linda Thompson to shift the focus, and said she was confused. Elvis’s voice was so sad she could hardly stand it. She was his last real chance, and he knew it. “Okay, baby,” he finally said. They never talked again.
Next he tried nineteen-year-old Melissa Blackwood, who he’d met earlier in August at a World Football League game. She was just about to give up her crown as queen of the Memphis Southmen, now renamed the Grizzlies, but beauty queen or not, she wasn’t used to getting calls at dawn at her parents’ house. Elvis sent one of the guys to pick her up at 7 A.M., and when she was ushered into his bedroom and found him sitting up in bed in his pajamas, she didn’t know what to think. He patted the massive mattress for her to sit down beside him, and he could tell it made her nervous, even though he promised her nothing would happen.
“He kind of held my hand, and we just sat and talked, and he called me ‘Brown Eyes.’ There was a little piece of hair on my forehead that grew down like a cowlick, and he played with that and said, ‘Look at this hair,’ just like I was a little child.”
Soon, he asked her to change into pajamas, too, which made her think he was out of his mind. But she did it, the big sleeves falling miles off her hands. He talked about his childhood for a while, told her how sick his daddy had been, and how trapped he felt by his fame. Then as they sat out on the