Page 94 - Too Much and Never Enough - Mary L. Trump

unglamorous, tightly budgeted, and highly regimented routine of running rental properties. But with his father’s backing, maybe he could use his hubris and shamelessness to make the push into Manhattan. Fred wasn’t living vicariously; he was intimately involved in all aspects of Donald’s early forays into the Manhattan market, getting things done behind the scenes while Donald played to the crowd up front. Fred made it possible for Donald to play a role that fulfilled his own desire for recognition while allowing his son to garner the reputation as a Manhattan developer that Fred had always aspired to. Fred would never get the public recognition, but it was enough for him to know that the opportunities Donald had to make his mark and promote himself would never have materialized without him. The success and the acclaim were due to Fred and his vast wealth. Any story about Donald was really a story about Fred. Fred also knew that if that secret was uncovered, the ruse would fall apart. In retrospect, Fred was the puppeteer, but he couldn’t be seen to be pulling his son’s strings. It’s not that Fred was overlooking Donald’s incompetence as a businessman; he knew he had more than enough talent in that arena for both of them. Fred was willing to stake millions of dollars on his son because he believed he could leverage the skills Donald did have—as a savant of self-promotion, shameless liar, marketer, and builder of brands—to achieve the one thing that had always eluded him: a level of fame that matched his ego and satisfied his ambition in a way money alone never could.
When things turned south in the late 1980s, Fred could no longer separate himself from his son’s brutal ineptitude; the father had no choice but to stay invested. His monster had been set free. All he could do was mitigate the damage, keep the cash flowing, and find somebody else to blame.
Over the next two years, Dad became more taciturn, more grim, and, if possible, thinner. The apartment in Sunnyside Towers was grey—grey because of the northwest exposure, grey from the unending clouds of cigarette smoke, grey because of his terrible moods. There were mornings when he barely managed to get out of bed, let alone spend a whole day with us. Sometimes he was hungover; sometimes it was his depression, which grew heavier. If we didn’t have anything scheduled, Dad often made an excuse to leave us alone, saying he had to work or run an errand for Gam.