Page 146 - Too Much and Never Enough - Mary L. Trump

He slid me a look and smiled. He was embellishing the story for effect, and he knew I knew it. “She was a total disaster,” he said, smiling more broadly.
Donald loved comeback stories, and he understood that the deeper the hole you crawled out of, the better billing your triumphant comeback would get. Which was exactly how he experienced his own journey. By conflating my dropping out of college and his hiring me to write his book (while throwing in a fictional drug addiction), he concocted a better story that somehow had him playing the role of my savior. Of course, between my dropping out of school and his hiring me, I’d dropped back into school, graduated, and gotten a master’s degree—all without taking any drugs at all. There was no point in setting the record straight, however; there never was with him. The story was for his benefit as much as anybody else’s, and by the time the doorbell rang, he probably already believed his version of events. When the three of us rose to greet the new guests, I realized that Melania had said only one word during our time together.
On June 11, 1999, Fritz called to tell me our grandfather had been taken to Long Island Jewish Medical Center, another Queens hospital my grandparents had patronized in recent years. He said it was likely the end.
I drove the ten minutes from my house and found that the room was already full. Gam sat in the only chair near the bed; Elizabeth stood next to her, holding my grandfather’s hand.
After saying hello, I stood by the window next to Robert’s wife, Blaine. She said, “We’re supposed to be in London with Prince Charles.” I realized she was talking to me—something she rarely did.
“Oh,” I said.
“He invited us to one of his polo matches. I can’t believe we had to cancel.” She sounded exasperated and made no effort to lower her voice.
I could have topped that story. In a week I was supposed to be getting married on a beach in Maui. Nobody in the family knew; they’d always been spectacularly uninterested in my personal life (when necessary, I asked a guy friend to accompany me to any family occasion that required a plus one) and never asked about my boyfriends or relationships.
A couple of years earlier, Gam and I had been talking about Princess Diana’s funeral, and when she had said with some vehemence, “It’s a