Page 135 - Too Much and Never Enough - Mary L. Trump

The fifty-eight-bedroom mansion with thirty-three bathrooms outfitted with fixtures plated in gold and an eighteen-hundred-square-foot living room that sported forty-two-foot ceilings was as garish and uncomfortable as I’d expected.
Dinner that evening was just me, Donald, and Marla. She and I had met a few times before, but we had never had a chance to get to know each other one on one. I found her friendly, and Donald seemed relaxed with her. She was just two years older than I was and about as different from Ivana as a human being could be. Marla was down to earth and soft spoken where Ivana was all flash, arrogance, and spite.
The next day, I spent the morning exploring the property. There were no other guests, so the entire place felt empty and strangely quiet. I talked to the butler to see if he had any interesting stories, got to know some of the other guys who worked there, and then took a quick swim before lunch, which was scheduled for 1:00 p.m. As formal as Mar-a-Lago was in some ways, it was also much more casual than our usual family gathering places, so I felt comfortable wearing a bathing suit and a pair of shorts to lunch, which was being served on the patio.
Donald, who was wearing golf clothes, looked up at me as I approached as if he’d never really seen me before. “Holy shit, Mary. You’re stacked.” “Donald!” Marla said in mock horror, slapping him lightly on the arm.
I was twenty-nine and not easily embarrassed, but my face reddened, and I suddenly felt self-conscious. I pulled my towel around my shoulders. It occurred to me that nobody in my family, outside of my parents and brother, had ever seen me in a bathing suit. Unfortunately for the book, that was about the only interesting thing that happened during my entire visit to Palm Beach.
Back in New York, Donald finally got sick of my asking him to sit for an interview and handed me a list of names. “Talk to these people.” Included were the presidents of his casinos and Maryanne’s husband, John. Although that was potentially helpful, he didn’t seem to understand that writing the book without any input from him would be close to impossible.
I met with all the presidents of the casinos. Not surprisingly, a lot of their answers were canned, and I realized that they weren’t going to give me dirt on what was happening in their boss’s business at the height of the chaos