Page 89 - Too Much and Never Enough - Mary L. Trump

Our uncle Rob, who wasn’t that much older than we were and seemed more like a sibling than an uncle, played soccer with us in the backyard whenever he came out from the city. We played hard and on hot days made frequent trips to the kitchen for a can of Coke or a grape juice. Rob would often grab a block of Philadelphia cream cheese; leaning against the refrigerator, he’d peel back the foil and eat the cream cheese as if it were a candy bar, then wash it down with soda.
Rob was a very good soccer player, and I tried to keep up with the boys, but it sometimes felt as though he used me for target practice.
When Donald was at the House, we mostly threw a baseball or football around. He had played baseball at New York Military Academy and was even less likely to pull his punches than Rob; he saw no reason to throw the ball any more gently just because his niece and nephews were six or nine or eleven. When I did manage to catch the ball he threw at me, the report of it against my leather glove reverberated off the brick retaining wall like a shot. Even with little kids, Donald had to be the winner.
Only the most dedicated optimist could have lived in Sunnyside Towers without losing hope. There was no doorman, and the plastic plants and flowers that filled the two large planters on either side of the plexiglass front door were perpetually coated in a thin film of dust. Our sixth-floor hallway reeked of stale cigarette smoke. The dank carpet was a soulless shade of seal grey. The indifferent overhead lighting hid nothing.
The height of my father’s lifestyle had been when he and my mom had lived in their one-bedroom near Sutton Place right after they were married. During that year, they had spent their evenings going to the Copacabana with friends and flying to Bimini on weekends. It had been all downhill from there, a trajectory that mirrored that of Donald, whose own lifestyle became more extravagant as the years passed. Donald had already been living in Manhattan when he married Ivana. After the wedding, they lived in a two-bedroom apartment on Fifth Avenue, then in an eight-bedroom apartment also on Fifth Avenue. Within five years they were living in the $10 million penthouse triplex in Trump Tower, all while Donald was still effectively on my grandfather’s payroll.
My grandfather created Midland Associates in the 1960s to benefit his children, each of whom was given 15 percent ownership in eight buildings,