Page 142 - Too Much and Never Enough - Mary L. Trump

came to take our plates. When he asked if we wanted the check Gam didn’t answer, so I nodded.
“Mary, he was so sick.”
“I know, Gam,” I said, assuming she meant his drinking.
“I didn’t know what to do.”
I thought she was going to cry and said, uselessly, “Gam, it’s okay.” “Those last few weeks”—she took a deep breath—“he couldn’t get out
of bed.”
“The day I came by—” I started to ask.
The waiter brought the check.
“Didn’t he go to the doctor?” I asked. “I mean, if he was that sick.”
“He felt so bad when he heard you’d come to see him.”
I waited for her to say something else, but Gam opened her purse. She
always paid for lunch. I drove her home in silence.
In 1987, I had spent my junior year abroad in Germany, a place for
which I had no affinity, but I’d thought it might please my grandfather since it was the country of his parents’ birth. (It didn’t.) I had planned to come home for Christmas, and I called my grandparents to ask if I could stay with them.
I’d stood at the pay phone in the hallway of my dorm with a handful of five-mark coins and called the House. “Hi, Grandpa. It’s Mary,” I’d said when he answered.
“Yes,” he had replied.
I explained why I was calling.
“Why can’t you stay with your mother?” he had asked.
“I’m allergic to the cats, and I’m afraid I might have an asthma attack.” “Then tell her to get rid of the cats.”
It was so much easier being the “nice lady” now.
I saw firsthand how difficult living with my grandfather had become for
Gam. My grandfather’s odd behavior had started with small things, such as hiding her checkbook. When she confronted him, he accused her of trying to bankrupt him. When she tried to reason with him, he became enraged, leaving her feeling shaken and unsafe. He worried constantly about money, terrified that his fortune was disappearing. My grandfather had never been poor a day in his life, but poverty became his sole preoccupation; he was tortured by the prospect of it.