Michael Jackson (33 page)

‘I just can't believe she would do that,’ Joseph said, putting his head in his hands. Gina had never seen him this way before;
it was a shock. Still, she was furious with him.

‘You called the cops, didn't you? Now what's gonna happen?’ Joseph asked. ‘And you, of all people in my life, know how much
I love my family. They're everything to me.’

Gina shook her head in astonishment. ‘I was trying to cover up for you so you could visit Joh'Vonnie, and this is what happened
to me because of it,’ she said, angrily. ‘Don't you even care about that?’

‘What I care about is my family,’ Joseph repeated. He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. ‘I have worked so hard,’ he
said, reaching into the breast pocket of his jacket. Then, with a shaking hand, he pulled out an envelope and handed it to
Gina. Inside, as Gina recalled it, there was a cheque for a large sum of money.

‘Take it,’ Joseph instructed. ‘It's yours.’

She gave him an incredulous look. ‘I don't want your money, Joseph,’ she said. She crumpled the cheque and threw it at him.
‘Leave my house,’ she demanded. ‘
How dare you?
’

Floundering, Joseph walked out of the room, his head drooping. Gina slammed the door behind him.

Michael was stunned by the way his mother, sister and brother had supposedly attacked Gina. He could not reconcile such a
violent act with the image of his beloved and gentle mother. He refused to believe it, and insists to this day that it never
happened. Most of the family, though, knows that Katherine had reached her limit. ‘Basically, Joseph was in love with that
girl Gina,’ recalled Tim Whitehead. ‘And my aunt didn't like it and wanted it to stop. She became extremely upset, and went
to the office to see Gina. After so many years, Kate had just reached her breaking point. You can only push a person so far.’

Gina decided not to press charges against the Jacksons. She says that her attorney told her not to bother, ‘because those
rich people will never be going to jail, and you'll be wasting your time trying to put them there.’ Instead, she filed a twenty-one-million-dollar
civil lawsuit against Katherine, Janet and Randy.

Katherine, Randy and Janet denied that the incident ever happened. They claimed in their answer to the suit that Gina would
never have been injured if she had exercised ‘ordinary care on her behalf’, which seemed… odd.

In the end, Gina and Joseph negotiated an out-of-court settlement, the details of which she is not at liberty to disclose.
‘I felt sorry for them,’ she concludes. ‘I loved that family. I know that I was the proverbial straw that broke the camel's
back, but like I told Katherine in court, next time, kick
his
ass. Not mine.’

At this time, the autumn of 1980, Michael supervised a music video of the Jacksons' song ‘Can You Feel It?’. Ironically, considering
what was going on at home with Gina Sprague, the song, written by Michael and Randy, is an anthem to loving human relations.
In the video, the brothers appear as superhuman behemoths hoisting a colourful rainbow to light the heavens. They sprinkle
Stardust upon the earth, which causes small children of all races and colours to beam at them with appreciation. Bathed in
rainbow hues, the youngsters gaze up in wonder at Michael and his brothers. In return, the Jacksons smile down upon the children
benevolently; Michael with the biggest smile of all.

‘It's a nice place Michael comes from,’ Steven Spielberg has observed. ‘I wish we could all spend some time in his world.’

Michael also became close to actress Jane Fonda, at this time forty-two, about twenty years Michael's senior, who would try
to encourage him to see his mother in a more human light. He and Jane met in 1980 at a press function in Los Angeles. The
two discussed their lives, both having come from show-business families, and quickly became close. Some people in Michael's
world have speculated that the reason he gravitated towards powerful women who seem self-sufficient, such as Diana Ross and,
later, Elizabeth Taylor, was because he had felt so helpless while watching his mother being abused by Joseph. He viewed Katherine
as weak and victimized, therefore he searched for a substitute mother, a strong woman he could emulate and respect. It's as
good a theory as any other; who knows? Maybe he just likes to hang out with divas.

Jane's Fonda's father, legendary actor Henry Fonda, had been an emotionally distant, difficult man, much like Michael's father,
Joseph. She understood Michael's anger at the way Joseph treated his wife, Katherine, had similarly heated emotions about
her own parents, and had worked for years to resolve them. She invited Michael to stay with her in her cabin on a New England
lake as she and her father, along with veteran actress, Katharine Hepburn, filmed
On Golden Pond.
‘In some ways,’ Jane Fonda recalled, ‘Michael reminded me of the walking wounded, an extremely fragile person.’

As Michael sat with Katharine Hepburn with a tape-recorder, she shared anecdotes about her life. ‘Every one included some
kind of message for Michael,’ said Jane, ‘about the way he might want to handle fame, about the way he might want to deal
with his life. They became good friends. He just thought she was fascinating.’

While in New England, Michael also befriended Henry Fonda.

He and Jane, though, were the closest. As he told me, ‘We would go out on the water together in a row boat and just talk,
talk and talk… you name it: politics, philosophers, racism, Vietnam, acting, all kinds of things.’

Once, Michael and Jane were taking a drive – Jane was behind the wheel – and they were discussing possible film projects for him.
‘God, Michael, I wish I could find a movie I could produce for you,’ she said, wistfully. Suddenly, an idea occurred to her.
‘I know what you've got to do,’ she said. ‘
Peter Pan
! That's it!’

Tears began to well in Michael's eyes. He wanted to know why she would suggest that character. She told him that, in her mind's
eye, he really was Peter Pan, the symbol of youth, joy and freedom.

Michael began to weep. ‘You know all over the walls of my room are pictures of Peter Pan. I totally identify with Peter Pan,’
he said, wiping his eyes, ‘the lost boy of Never-Never Land.’

When the subject of Katherine came up between them during one conversation, Michael confided in Jane about the Gina Sprague
incident. According to Bernice Littman, who was a Beverly Hills friend of Jane Fonda's and worked for her as a personal assistant
at this time, ‘Jane thought the whole [Katherine vs. Gina.] thing was tragic, and that Michael was too fragile to handle it.
She also felt badly for Michael's mother and wondered just how far a woman has to be pushed before she reacts in such a way.
She spent a lot of time trying connect with him, really worked at it, took it on as a true concern in her life. “I feel a
responsibility to him,” she told me, “just from one human being to another. He so needs love.” “You have to stop trying to
find strength in other people,” she told him one day during one of their talks. He was at her home in the library with her;
I was in the outer office. “Your mother has flaws, Michael, just as we all do. But you're an adult, now,” she said. “Why not
let your mother be who she is, and find your own strength, within?” I don't think Michael could understand what she was saying.
“Can you help me?” he asked her. “I'm so miserable. I'm having a terrible life.” They embraced. “You're having a wonderful
life, Michael,” she said. “These are just hard years, but it'll get better. I promise.”

‘Michael sobbed like a baby,’ said Bernice. ‘So did I. I stood outside of the library and just cried. It was so sad. He was
so sad. It was as if he was an alien, just visiting, from another world.’

Meanwhile, in the real world, a CBS Records executive telephoned Michael to ask him how he should handle the press, who had
begun asking questions about his mother.

‘What do you mean? Michael wondered.

‘The Gina Sprague incident.’

‘Who's she?’ Michael asked, snappishly.

‘The woman who got into the disagreement with your mother, Randy and Janet.’

‘That never happened,’ Michael said, quickly.

‘But – ’

‘I'm sorry,’ Michael concluded, ‘but I have to go, now.’

With that, he hung up the phone. Michael was withdrawing deeper into his fantasy world, a place where such things as his mother
possibly assaulting his father's girlfriend would never occur. He was becoming more distant, harder to reach. How long would
it be before no one, not even someone like Jane Fonda, would be able to connect with him? It would simply be too painful for
him to allow anyone to get that close.

Despite the inroads he had made towards independence from his family, by 1981, Michael Jackson still felt that his life was
spinning out of control. When he was onstage, performing, he could transform himself into the desirable person of his dreams:
a sexy, outgoing, confident person who exerted total control over himself and his audience. But offstage was another story.
When he looked in the mirror, he saw a person he didn't like very much, a person who still allowed himself to be controlled
by other people, whose talent was respected but whose opinions didn't matter. He'd begun to work on some of that with John
Branca, but what could he do about the physical appearance of the man in the mirror? He'd never felt handsome, that's for
certain, and by 1981 he had a litany of personal complaints, all adding to his deep insecurity.

Michael considered rhinoplasty surgery, popularly known as ‘a nose job’, as a possibility to thin out his wide nose. Since
about the age of thirteen, he'd always been fixated on the size of his nose, and his brothers had only made matters worse
with their nickname for him: Big Nose. Wide, flat noses were a Jackson family trait, inherited from Joseph. Michael had been
threatening to have the surgery for years, but he was too afraid actually to go through with it. However, in the spring of
1979, he tripped during a complicated dance routine, fell onstage… and broke his nose. Fate had intervened; he had no choice.
He flew back to Los Angeles and had his first rhinoplasty.

Gina Sprague recalled, ‘Joseph told me he doubted that Michael would ever have had the nose job if he didn't have to do it.
That was the first. No one ever dreamed what it would lead to in the future. After the bandages came off, Michael liked what
he saw.’

The result of that first surgery is the nose seen on the cover of Michael's
Off the Wall
album, one just a bit smaller than the one with which he was born. Indeed, Michael's face had been surgically transformed,
confirming the notion for him that his appearance was one thing over which he could absolutely exert control if he wanted
to do so. However, afterwards Michael complained of some breathing problems, and trouble singing. He was then referred to
Dr Steven Hoefflin, who would suggest a second surgery. Hoefflin would perform that surgery, and others that Michael would
eventually have on his face.

His friend, Jane Fonda was sufficiently distressed enough about Michael's new plastic surgery to approach him about it. She
was perceptive enough to speculate that the real reason for the operations on his nose was not so that he could look like
Diana Ross – as rumoured – but, so that he would
not
end up looking like his father, Joseph. She was a different kind of friend for Michael, a person with more on her mind than
just show business. Thoughtful and direct, she was the only person in his life who actually confronted Michael about his surgeries.
‘I want you to stop now,’ she told Michael, according to a later recollection. ‘No more. Promise me you won't go too far with
this thing. Love yourself the way you are, for who you are.’

‘I'll try,’ Michael promised.

‘And stand up straight,’ she told him, as if his school teacher. ‘You must look like you are somebody important, and that
you understand what you're doing and why you are here. If you at least
look
self-confident, maybe you won't be so shy.’