Page 130 - Too Much and Never Enough - Mary L. Trump

“The dean of students at Tufts sent me a letter you wrote.”
“Really? Why?”
It took me a minute to realize what he was talking about. One of my
professors had been up for tenure, and before I graduated, I had written a letter in support of him. That had been four years earlier, and I’d forgotten all about it.
“The letter was to show me how great you thought Tufts was. It was a fund-raising thing.”
“I’m sorry. That was rude of him.”
“No, it’s a fantastic letter.”
The point of the conversation was eluding me. Then Donald said,
apropos of nothing as far as I could tell, “Do you want to write my next book? The publisher wants me to get started, and I thought it would be a great opportunity for you. It’ll be fun.”
“That sounds incredible,” I said. And it did. I heard the plane engine rev in the background and remembered where he was. “Where are you going, anyway?”
“Heading back from Vegas. Call Rhona tomorrow.” Rhona Graff was his executive assistant at the Trump Organization.
“I will. Thanks, Donald.”
It wasn’t until later, when I reread the letter, that I understood why Donald thought it would be a good idea to hire me—not because it was “fantastic” but because it demonstrated that I was really good at making other people look really good.
A few days later, I was given my own desk in the back office of the Trump Organization. A nondescript, open space with drop ceilings, fluorescent lighting, and huge steel filing cabinets lining the walls, it had a lot more in common with the utilitarian office of Trump Management on Avenue Z than the gold-and-glass walls lined with magazine covers featuring Donald’s face that greeted guests out front.
I spent the first week on the job familiarizing myself with the people who worked there and the filing system. (To my surprise, there was a folder with my name on it containing a single sheet of paper—a handwritten letter I had sent to Donald my junior year in high school. I’d asked if he could get me a pair of tickets to a Rolling Stones concert. He couldn’t.) I kept to myself for the most part, but whenever I had a question, Ernie East, one of Donald’s vice presidents and a very nice man, helped me out. He suggested