Page 71 - Too Much and Never Enough - Mary L. Trump

drywall, softening it. By December, the wall around the unit in my parents’ bedroom had deteriorated so badly that a frigid draft constantly blew into the room. My mother tried to cover the wall around the air conditioner with plastic sheeting, but the arctic air continued to pour in. Even with the heat blasting, their bedroom was always bitterly cold. The superintendent at the Highlander never responded to their request to have a maintenance crew sent up, and the wall was never repaired.
New Year’s Eve 1967 was particularly inclement, but despite the rain and wind, my parents drove out east to celebrate with friends at Gurney’s Inn in Montauk. By the time they were ready to drive back to Jamaica in the early hours of New Year’s Day, the weather had turned even colder and the steady rain had become a downpour. When Freddy went outside to warm up the car, the battery was dead. Dressed only in his shirtsleeves, he got drenched trying to get the car to start. By the time he and Linda returned to the apartment and their windblown bedroom, he was sick.
Between the stress of the last two years and his heavy drinking and smoking (by then he averaged two packs of cigarettes a day), Freddy was in bad shape to begin with. His cold rapidly worsened, and after a few days he wasn’t getting any better as he shivered, wrapped in a blanket, unable to escape the drafts. Linda repeatedly called the superintendent but got no response. Finally she called her father-in-law. “Please, Dad,” she begged, “there must be someone who can fix this. Maybe from another building in Jamaica Estates or Brooklyn? Freddy is so sick.” My grandfather suggested that she speak to the Highlander super again; there was nothing he could do.
Because for so long their life had been lived in the confines of Fred Trump’s domain, it didn’t occur to either one of them to hire a handyman who wasn’t on Fred Trump’s payroll. That wasn’t how it worked in the family; Fred’s permission was sought whether it was needed or not. The wall was never fixed.
A week after New Year’s, Linda’s father called to tell her that her mother had had a stroke. My mom didn’t want to leave my father, but her mother’s condition was serious, and she needed to fly down to Fort Lauderdale as soon as she could arrange child care.
Not long after, Gam called my mother to tell her that Freddy was in Jamaica Hospital with lobar pneumonia. Linda immediately got onto a plane and took a taxi straight to the hospital as soon as she landed.