Child Bride by Suzanne Finstad

Beaulieu and her obsession to meet Elvis, and she accompanied Currie to the Beaulieus’.
    Contrary to legend, neither Ann nor Paul Beaulieu exhibited the slightest hesitation about sending their not-quite-ninth-grade daughter to meet Elvis Presley, according to both Carol and Currie Grant. “The father didn’t say much,” recalled Currie of that evening. “The mother wanted it real bad—because Priscilla wanted it real bad.”
    This, reduced to its essence, was the single element of the Elvis-and-Priscilla myth that mystified even Elvis’s legion of fans:
Why
would the parents of a fourteen-year-old girl allow their daughter to meet a twenty-four-year-old sex symbol at his home? Priscilla later created the fiction, perpetuated in nearly all Elvis folklore, that her father and mother were extremely strict and opposed the meeting with Elvis—perhaps partly because she was embarrassed (what kind of parents
would
consent?) and partly because her parents’ enthusiasm about the meeting and their consent were not consistent with the proper image she would present once her association with Elvis made her famous.
    In reality, Ann Beaulieu was an accessory before the fact in her daughter’s girlish quest to meet Elvis Presley. The reasons for this were psychologically complex. Priscilla was the center of Ann’s universe, her love child, her remembrance of Jimmy. Ann permitted Priscilla to do things she would not have considered for her other children. Her daughter’s infatuation with Elvis,moreover, must have struck an emotional chord in Ann. How could she not be reminded of herself at just past fourteen—sneaking out of the house to date a handsome, dark-haired older man in uniform? Ann would not deprive her daughter of the joy her own parents had denied her. “She had a lot of compassion for me,” Priscilla said of her mother’s attitude toward Elvis.
    “She understood.”
    Ann was also star-struck, for she had been drawn to Elvis Presley since the family’s Del Valle days. During the Grants’ get-acquainted conversation with the Beaulieus, “it was not a question of
if
Ann would let Priscilla go,” recalled Currie, “it was rather a question of when I would take her.”
    Currie left the house without setting a date for the big night. He wished to perpetuate his amorous game with Priscilla Beaulieu awhile longer, capitalizing on his connection to the King. Priscilla had become for him the consummate challenge. He was a driven man who had to get past her look-but-don’t-touch demureness. Currie Grant wanted, desperately, to
conquer
Priscilla Beaulieu.
    During their next conversation at the club, he set the trap: “I told her we’d have to be alone.” Priscilla at first demurred, Currie recalled. She told him her parents knew he was married. “Well, somehow we’ve got to be alone,” he insisted. “I can’t stand it.” Priscilla then came up with a plan, according to Currie: Currie could ask her parents’ permission to take her to a movie with him and Carol; then he could tell his wife he had to work late, pick Priscilla up alone, and tell her mother and father they would collect Carol on their way to the theater. “That was her idea, not mine,” Currie said. “I thought, Man, that was pretty provocative. And if I get caught they will put me
under
the prison!”
    Priscilla’s and Currie’s motives became clear the first night they were alone. “After we got in the hills, I tried to kiss her, tried to talk about things,” he recalled. “All she wanted to do was talk about Elvis. Finally I just reached over and kissed her. She didn’t really resist, but she didn’t really want to do it. It was like kissing a table. I wasn’t used to people being that way, stiff, and I let it go.” Priscilla persisted in her questions about Elvis. “The girl would not give up. There was nothing I could do but talk to her about Elvis.” Currie persisted in trying to kiss Priscilla “until she finally got used