Page 162 - Too Much and Never Enough - Mary L. Trump

was standing right in front of her.
“Hi, Aunt Maryanne.”
It took her a few seconds to realize who I was. “Mary.” She didn’t smile.
“How are you?” she asked, her expression rigid.
“Everything’s great. My daughter just turned eight, and—”
“I didn’t know you had a daughter.”
Of course she didn’t know I had a daughter or that I was raising her with
the woman I’d married after my grandfather’s funeral and then divorced or that I had recently received my doctorate in clinical psychology. But she acted as if her lack of such knowledge was an insult to her. The rest of our brief conversation was equally tense. She mentioned that Ivana had missed Ivanka’s wedding shower but said, sotto voce, that she couldn’t discuss why.
I retreated to my table, and when I realized the vegetarian meal I’d ordered had not arrived, I ordered a martini in its stead. The olives would suffice.
Sometime later, I saw Maryanne, looking determined, head toward us as if on a mission. She walked straight up to my brother and said, “We need to talk about the elephant in the room.” Then, gesturing to include me, “The three of us.”
A few weeks after Ivanka and Jared’s wedding, Fritz and I met with Maryanne and Robert at her apartment on the Upper East Side. It wasn’t clear to me why Rob was there, but I thought perhaps he planned to make good on his claim that the “statute of limitations” on family estrangement had passed. I took it as a good sign, but as the afternoon wore on, I became less sure. We didn’t discuss anything that seemed pertinent. As we sat in the living room with its spectacular view of Central Park and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Maryanne made passing references to “the debacle,” as she called the lawsuit, but nobody else seemed eager to go down that road.
Rob leaned forward in his chair, and I hoped finally we were going to start dealing with the so-called elephant in the room. Instead he told a story.
Ten years earlier, Rob had still been working for Donald in Atlantic City when Donald’s financial situation was dire. His investors were getting hammered, the banks were after him, and his personal life was in shambles. When things were at their worst, Donald had called Rob with a request.
“Listen, Rob, I don’t know how this is all going to end,” he had said. “But it’s tough, and I might drop dead of a heart attack. If anything happens