Page 119 - Too Much and Never Enough - Mary L. Trump

“Don’t ask.” He seemed annoyed.
Gam asked him about his kids, if anything was new with him and Ivana. He didn’t have much to say; clearly bored, he left after ten minutes or so. Gam glanced at the door to make sure he was gone. “Somebody’s cranky.”
Now I did laugh. “To be fair, he’s having a tough time,” I said. In the last twelve months, the Taj Mahal, his favorite Atlantic City casino, had declared bankruptcy just a little over a year after it had opened; his marriage was a disaster, thanks in part to his very public affair with Marla Maples; the banks had put him on an allowance; and the paperback version of his second book, Surviving at the Top, had been published under the title The Art of Survival. Despite the fact that he’d brought it all on himself, he seemed put upon rather than humbled or humiliated.
“Poor Donald,” Gam mocked. She seemed almost giddy, and I thought the hospital staff might need to cut back on her pain meds. “He was always like this. I shouldn’t say it, but when he went to the Military Academy, I was so relieved. He didn’t listen to anyone, especially me, and he tormented Robert. And, oh, Mary! He was such a slob. At school he got medals for neatness, then when he came home, he was still a slob!”
“What did you do?”
“What could I do? He never listened to me. And your grandfather didn’t care.” She shook her head. “Donald got away with murder.”
That surprised me. I had always assumed my grandfather was a taskmaster. “That doesn’t sound like him.”
At the time, my grandfather was at the Hospital for Special Surgery in Manhattan getting a hip replacement. I think he had only ever been in the hospital once, when he’d had a tumor on his neck near his right ear removed in 1989. I don’t know if the timing of his hip surgery was a coincidence or if it had been scheduled after Gam was admitted so she wouldn’t have to deal with him while she recovered. His mental state had been deteriorating for some time and while he was in the hospital had definitely taken a turn for the worse. A few times, late at night, the nurses found him trying to leave wearing only boxer shorts. He told them he was going to find Mrs. Trump. Gam seemed pretty happy not to be found.
Donald’s perceived success with the Grand Hyatt in 1980 had paved the way for Trump Tower, which had opened to great fanfare in 1983. From his