From Here to the Great Unknown

Lisa often saw Elvis “out of it” or “passed out,” and she “always worried about [him] dying” (47). She would notice him “swaying” or falling, particularly “toward the end.” Nevertheless, Elvis’s “whole face lit up” when he saw his daughter, and Lisa didn’t mention her fears to anyone; she “just internalized it all” (48-49).

Lisa’s mother’s family lived in New Jersey, and she remembers going to visit them when she was six or seven. She had just come from Graceland, and her grandparents believed she “needed to be de-brat-icized” and insisted on treating her like she wasn’t “anything special” (52). This was a “confusing” change for Lisa, and she often succumbed to tantrums. Once, Lisa’s small compact went missing; she looked everywhere for it in tears but later discovered that her grandmother had stolen it from her and put it in her own purse. Lisa reflects that she did “[act] like a princess sometimes” but this was contrasted by her persistent “self-doubt” (52).

Elvis had a string of girlfriends after he divorced Priscilla. When Lisa was nine, he was dating Ginger Alden, who “[drove] him crazy.” Lisa would sometimes overhear their arguments on the phone, and she hated seeing her father upset.