From Here to the Great Unknown

Riley begins the chapter by noting that her mother “wasn’t in a place where she could recount all the great, fun times in her life” when she recorded the interviews that would become this book (157). In the interviews, Lisa “focused mostly on the trauma,” leaving out much of the 10 years following her divorce from Michael Jackson—happy years for Lisa in which “she created a magical life for [Riley] and [her] brother and was surrounded by a large group of devoted friends” (157). Riley recounts her own memories and what she remembers her mother telling her about this period.

While the family lived in Florida, Riley remembers watching her mother soothing her baby brother. At that moment, she began to understand “the depth of [Lisa’s] maternal instincts” and also to suspect “that Ben was the love of [her] mom’s life” (159). Both of their parents worked hard to create “joyful childhoods” for Riley and Ben, but Ben and Lisa “shared a very deep soul bond,” just as Lisa had with Elvis and Elvis had with his mother (159). Lisa found Ben to be so much like Elvis that “it scared [her],” and she recognized “a generational fucking cycle” repeating in their relationship. With their family history of addiction and substance abuse, she believed “Ben didn’t stand a fucking chance” (160).

After divorcing Michael Jackson, Lisa began suffering from panic attacks and moved her family to Florida in an effort to avoid the paparazzi. Although Danny had been hurt by Lisa’s betrayal, he remained involved in the children’s lives and came to Florida to help. Lisa “felt immense guilt” for leaving Danny and wanted to get back together, but he was too afraid of getting hurt again. Lisa muses that she grew up with “no prototype to follow” regarding family life and stability (164). She never believed that she and Danny would stay married forever, but they turned out to be “a different kind of soulmates” and would always play an important role in one another’s lives (164-65).

During the day, Lisa and Danny recorded music in the garage while Ben and Riley played together. In the evenings, the four of them spent time together as a family, going to the movies or going out for ice cream. Eventually, Lisa recovered enough to return to California, where they settled into a house in Hidden Hills. The “rustic” house was located on five acres 30 miles west of LA, far away from the world of celebrity. Ben and Riley were allowed to “[run] amok” just like Lisa had done during her childhood in Graceland. Lisa “curated” the home to be “her version of Graceland” for her children, a place where they could play outside for hours in their own imaginary worlds (167). During this period, Lisa also created a “dreamlike communal life” in which she and her children “were never alone” (168). A large staff occupied the house, and some of Lisa’s and Riley’s friends also moved in. Lisa ruled over everything with “a Gaia-like quality” of “mystical intuition” (169). Riley and Ben were happy playmates. As Riley grew up, she began to get annoyed with her little brother, but he was so lovable that she could never stay mad at him for long. They attended a private school in Woodland Hills, but Lisa would often let them stay home if they just asked. Danny was more strict and tried to homeschool them for a time, but Lisa was always the one truly in charge.

Priscilla had a new child who was just a few years older than Riley, and this helped Lisa form a new bond with her mother. Reflecting back, Riley believes her mother worked to put the past behind her so that her children could enjoy Priscilla as a grandmother. Priscilla’s mother also lived nearby and embodied “the quintessential grandmother” in a way that Priscilla did not, and the whole family would have large dinners at her house every Sunday. Riley was thankful for her large family and loved the trips and holiday gatherings with dozens of cousins. They were “a normal family, if famous” (174) and Riley felt this normalcy for “a solid two decades” (175).

Lisa used to take Riley with her to photoshoots and fittings, and Riley loved to play in her mother’s “massive closet.” Lisa also took Riley to parties, sometimes pulling her out of bed to come meet one celebrity or another. Riley would often “fall asleep to the sound of a party” (178), with her mother and father tucking her in, “some nights a bit tipsy and wild” but part of “the closest family you could imagine” (179). Holidays were celebrated extravagantly; “nothing was low-key,” and Lisa “wanted every moment to be extraordinary” (180). However, Riley would still occasionally find her crying alone, listening to Elvis’s music.

Lisa struggled with her music career. She was talented but “didn’t feel like she had real control over her music” (180). Mostly, people wanted her to sing covers of Elvis’s songs, which she refused to do. At shows, she was often approached by Elvis impersonators, and she struggled to be “taken seriously.” Often, when the record company would send tracks back for her to approve, they were “more countrified” to “[target] Elvis fans” (183). Nevertheless, Lisa loved touring and connecting with her and her father’s fans, and Riley and Ben loved the excitement of traveling on the tour bus. When she was working on songs, Lisa would play them for her children and tell them what they were about. Although Lisa wasn’t using drugs at that point in her life, Riley remembers one song, “High Enough,” that was “very clearly about addiction” and indicated that “storm clouds were gathering even then” (185).

Lisa married actor Nicolas Cage in 2002, but the relationship was “very short-lived.” Nic used to come to the house in a different Lamborghini every day, and they would all take weekend yachting trips to Catalina Island. On one trip, Lisa and Nic got into a fight, and Lisa’s $65,000 engagement ring ended up at the bottom of the ocean. He bought her a second ring, but their marriage lasted only 108 days.

During Riley’s childhood, Lisa also maintained a house on the Big Island of Hawaii. For Riley’s 16th birthday, they traveled there with a large group of friends, and Lisa threw her daughter a party on the beach. The party went on all night; Riley, who “could never last as long as [her] parents” (192) went to bed after three o’clock in the morning, leaving the music playing and her father naked in a lawn chair, drinking champagne with some of Lisa’s security guards.

After her brief marriage to Nicolas Cage, Lisa met Michael Lockwood. She “desperately wanted a normal life” and felt like Michael might finally be able to deliver it. Her impending fourth marriage caused her to reexamine her relationship with her own mother and really “try to heal what had been done” (192). Lisa wrote a song for Priscilla, and the two grew genuinely close for the first time. Michael and Lisa were married in Japan in 2005. At the rehearsal dinner, Lisa began to panic and asked Riley to walk outside with her. At 16 years old, Riley wasn’t sure about the source of her mother’s anxiety, but looking back, she wonders if Lisa “knew somewhere in her that this was the beginning of the last chapter” (195). The next day, they had a beautiful wedding, and everyone took the train north to the Gora Kadan hot springs.

Now that Lisa was settled with Michael, she “desperately wanted more children” (196). After several rounds of IVF, she became pregnant with twins and moved into a house in Montecito, hoping to create “a sort of fairy-tale life” with her new babies (196). Lisa felt a “deeply spiritual” connection to her daughters, and she had a sense of what they would be like before they were even born. In 2008, she gave birth to Harper and Finley. Riley was 19 and immediately smitten with her little sisters. She often slept on a cot at the babies’ feet and constantly helped care for them. Even though Riley and Ben had “perfect, amazing” childhoods, Lisa wanted to do even better with the twins. She decided to sell the house in LA and give her daughters a childhood in the English countryside.

Lisa was fully committed to her second chance at motherhood, but in a “heartbreaking” turn of events, her addiction “showed up and burned everything down” (199). With everything run by her staff, Lisa started to feel out of control of her own life. When she discovered that some of her staff members, who “were also her best friends,” were being a little too loose with their business credit cards, Lisa once again began to feel betrayed and “unlovable” (200). One by one, Lisa sent away almost everyone “she had known and loved” over the last 10 years until she was left with just her children, her husband, and Danny. Lisa reflects that she learned from Michael Jackson to “push people the fuck away” (201). While she sometimes came across as “really mean” or “angry,” it was always a defense mechanism to “protect [her]self from pain” (201). After her daughters were born, she “woke up” to the reality that “[a] lot of people were invested in having [her] quiet and manageable” (202).

No one knew that she had begun to abuse the opioids she was prescribed after her C-section delivery.