Page 98 - Too Much and Never Enough - Mary L. Trump

and silk and outrageous hair and makeup, Donald in his expensive three- piece suits and shiny shoes, everyone else looking conservative and unfashionable by comparison.
I grew up thinking that Donald had struck out on his own and single- handedly built the business that had turned my family name into a brand and that my grandfather, provincial and miserly, cared only about making and keeping money. On both counts, the truth was vastly different. A New York Times article published on October 2, 2018, that uncovered the vast amounts of alleged fraud and quasi-legal and illegal activities my family had engaged in over the course of several decades included this paragraph:
Fred Trump and his companies also began extending large loans and lines of credit to Donald Trump. Those loans dwarfed what the other Trumps got, the flow so constant at times that it was as if Donald Trump had his own Money Store. Consider 1979, when he borrowed $1.5 million in January, $65,000 in February, $122,000 in March, $150,000 in April, $192,000 in May, $226,000 in June, $2.4 million in July and $40,000 in August, according to records filed with New Jersey casino regulators.
In 1976, when Roy Cohn suggested that Donald and Ivana sign a prenuptial agreement, the terms set for Ivana’s compensation were based on Fred’s wealth because at the time Donald’s father was his only source of income. I heard from my grandmother that, in addition to alimony and child support as well as the condo, the prenup, at Ivana’s insistence, included a “rainy day” fund of $150,000. My parents’ divorce agreement had also been based on my grandfather’s wealth, but Ivana’s $150,000 bonus was worth almost twenty-one years of the $600-per-month checks my mother received for child support and alimony.
Before Ivana, there had always been a sameness to the holidays that made them blur together. Christmas when I was five was indistinguishable from Christmas when I was eleven. The routine never varied. We’d enter the House through the front door at 1:00 p.m., dozens of packages in tow, handshakes and air kisses all around, then gather in the living room for shrimp cocktail. Like the front door, we used the living room only twice a year. Dad came and went, but I have no recollection of his being there one way or another.