Michael Jackson (96 page)

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: O
H
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.”’

Michael Jackson is a powerful person who has a strong effect on people, even the most wealthy and famous who want nothing
more than to be in his life. Apparently, Lisa Marie Presley was not immune to that influence. Despite all that had happened
with him in their twenty-month marriage, she was compelled to keep abreast of the goings on in Michael’s life. Maybe in an
effort to achieve that goal, she suddenly began socializing with Michael’s sister Janet. A few months earlier, the two were
spotted together at a club in Manhattan called Life, seemingly enjoying each other’s company and causing people to wonder
what in the world they were doing together.

Lisa explained to friends that she was advising Janet on how to get back in shape for her upcoming
Velvet Rope
tour; Janet had apparently gained about forty pounds and was determined to lose them, and more. However, it’s unlikely that
Lisa and Janet were going to the gym together. It simply looked like they were having fun because, that same week, they were
seen shopping, having lunch, going to the movies and even catching an off-Broadway play, both in disguises. In September 1997,
Lisa attended the launch party for Janet’s
Velvet Rope
CD. Shortly after, they attended the MTV Awards together.

When Michael heard from Janet that she was socializing with Lisa, he became intensely interested. ‘Does she ever talk about
me?’ he wanted to know. ‘I’ll bet she hates me, now. Does she hate me, now?’

Janet told her brother that Lisa seemed to hold no grudge against him for what had happened in their relationship and, in
fact, would actually like to see him. What she didn’t tell him was that Lisa had been suspicious of Michael’s marriage to
‘Nursey’. She knew Michael well enough to know that his goal had always been to have children, and he didn’t seem to care
how he got them. He had wanted Lisa to bear him a child, but she drew the line there since she didn’t want to bring a child
into an unhappy union. She suspected that he and Debbie had an agreement to have a baby, and that their marriage was just
a device to make it legitimate. Janet confirmed all of those suspicions, telling her that Michael ‘did it [married Debbie]
for Katherine, really.’ Lisa didn’t hold against Michael any of his choices where Debbie was concerned. ‘You can’t blame someone
for being exactly who they are, can you?’ she asked her friend, Monica Pastelle. ‘A lot of people use surrogate mothers and,
if you look at this and really kinda squint at it, I think that’s what it is. But,’ she hastened to add, ‘it gives me a terrible
headache if I think too hard about it, so I try not to.’

Michael then telephoned Lisa to ask if they could be friends. ‘I’ve always loved you,’ he said to her, according to a later
recollection, ‘and I hate that way it ended between us. I really do.’

Lisa told him that an important aspect of her Scientology training is that she not hold on to bitterness and anger, and that
she had dedicated herself to get past any negative feelings about him. He was happy to hear it. He then invited her and her
children to join him in South Africa where his HIStory tour was finally wrapping up. His mother and father would also be there,
he said, so Lisa wouldn’t have to feel awkward about the propriety of such a visit. They were helping him watch Prince Michael,
he explained. (That may have been true, but Michael also had a team of nurses and nannies on hand.) Lisa couldn’t resist;
she said, yes.

Whatever Lisa’s intentions had ever been involving Michael, she still had a deep connection with him – and seeing him building
a family with another woman wasn’t easy for her. It had been some time since she had immersed herself in his world, which
as she once said, was ‘the only way to figure out how he’s doing. You can’t ask someone how a rollercoaster ride is while
they’re still on it – you just have to hop on too.’ Lisa had to see for herself how he had adjusted to life since they parted
company. A lot had changed for him. He had sidestepped the molestation allegations, released new music, toured successfully,
married, had a child. Finally, it appeared he was settling down, finding himself. Would she now find a new Michael Jackson,
one that had risen from the ashes of the broken man she knew before. It was this curiosity that took her across the Atlantic,
twice. She would first join him in London, where he would be playing Wembley Stadium (12-17 July). She had Scientology business
there, she said. Then, she would return to the States, and rejoin Michael at the end of the tour in South Africa.

Perfect, Michael must have thought. As it happened, Debbie was joining him in France, Austria and Germany (25 June-6 July),
just a week before Lisa’s arrival, to see him and Prince Michael, who was about four months old. By that point, she’d only
seen the baby once, maybe twice, since he was born. She was planning to leave before the London dates, which was fine with
Michael because she and Lisa would then not cross paths.

In Germany, Michael was upfront with Debbie and told her that Lisa would be joining him on his next dates in England and then,
later, in South Africa. Debbie wasn’t thrilled with the news – she may have thought Lisa was encroaching on her territory – but
she got over it, quickly. Their relationship wasn’t such that she could tell him what to do, anyway, even if they were married.
Plus, she didn’t really care. ‘Look, the thing is this,’ she told a friend. ‘I don’t tell Michael Jackson how to live his
life, and he doesn’t tell me how to live mine. [Debbie always referred to her husband as “Michael Jackson”.] And that’s a
fact,’ she concluded. ‘So if he wants to run around with his ex-wife, I’m not going stop him. Because I don’t want him stopping
me if I want to do the same thing with my ex-boyfriend.’

‘But that’s not a normal marriage, is it?’ protested Debbie’s friend.

‘We’re talking
Michael Jackson’s
marriage, here,’ quipped Debbie. ‘Come on! Get real. I have it under control. I’m a grown-up, and I know what I’m doing,
and so does he. Besides,’ she said, ‘I think we’ll have a big announcement, soon.’

Debbie didn’t explain at the time, but she and Michael either had sex (as they would later insist), or did something more
artificial to make it happen, but while she was in Paris, staying at the Disneyland Hotel outside the city, she became pregnant
with his second child. She knew her relationship with Michael – such as it was, whatever it was – was not in jeopardy. They had
an arrangement; it seemed to work.

Meanwhile, in London, Lisa and her two children joined Michael and his parents in London. They all stayed in Michael’s $10,000-a-night
suite at the luxury Carlton Towers hotel.

Michael’s three dates at Wembley Stadium were all sold out; he was in a terrific mood. However, as devoted as Lisa was to
it during their visit, she didn’t have enough quality time with him to get a handle on Michael’s state of being.

Three months went by, and Lisa joined him again in South Africa in October. This time Lisa stepped off the plane with a shock
of blonde hair, moderately resembling the shade of Debbie’s hair. During this trip, she made a concerted effort to ‘weasel’
her way (as she later put it) into his busy days.

Lisa and Michael, and his parents, son and her children, all stayed at the Palace Hotel in the centre of Johannesburg. The
former couple was seen holding hands and beaming at one another. Yet, beneath the veneer of her pleasant smiles, Lisa had
begun to grow uncomfortable with the new Michael Jackson. While he was not nearly as troubled as he had been during her reign
in his life, some of the changes she saw in him bothered her.