Too Much and Never Enough, стр. 25
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.
My father was still in the hospital on January 20, 1967, their fifth wedding anniversary. Undeterred by his poor health and worsening alcoholism, my mother sneaked a bottle of champagne and a couple of glasses into his room. Regardless of what was happening around them or what state her husband was in, they were determined to celebrate.
Dad had been home from the hospital for only a few weeks when Linda got a call from her father. Her mother was doing better after her stroke, he told her, but he hated leaving her at the mercy of nurses while he put in full days at the quarry. The stress of work, the expense of his wife’s care, and his constant worry about her were taking their toll on both of them. “I’m at the end of my rope,” he said. “I don’t see how we can continue.”
Although Linda didn’t know exactly what her father was implying, he sounded so distraught she was afraid he meant that both he and her mother would be better off dead and, out of desperation, might do something about it. When she told Freddy about her parents’ precarious situation, he told her not to worry and called his father-in-law to tell him he was going to help out. “Quit your job, Mike. Take care of Mom.” Money wasn’t an issue, at least not then, but Freddy wasn’t sure how his father would react when he told him.
“Of course,” Fred said. “That’s what you do for family.”
My grandfather believed that in the same way he believed it was appropriate to send your kids to college or join a country club: even if it was of no interest to him or wasn’t particularly important to him, it was simply “what you do.”
After the Steeplechase deal collapsed, there was less for Freddy to do at Trump Management. He and Linda had been planning to buy a house since my brother had been born, and now, with extra time on his hands, they started to look for one. It didn’t take long for them to find a perfect four-bedroom on a half-acre lot in Brookville, a beautiful, affluent town on Long Island. The move would add at least half an hour to Dad’s commute, but a change of scenery and the freedom of being out of his father’s building would do him some good. He assured the real estate agent that he could meet the asking price and getting a mortgage would be no problem.
When the bank called a few days later to tell him his mortgage application had been rejected, Freddy was stunned. With the exception of his one year with TWA, he’d been working for his father for almost six years. He was still an executive at Trump Management, which brought in tens of millions of dollars a year free and clear. In 1967, the company was worth approximately $100 million. Freddy made a decent living, he didn’t have many expenses, and there was a trust fund and a (fast dwindling) stock portfolio. The most plausible explanation was that Fred, still burned by what he considered his son’s betrayal and reeling from the failure of Steeplechase, had intervened in some way to prevent the transaction. My grandfather had prominent contacts and enormous accounts at Chase, Manufacturer’s Hanover Trust, and the other biggest banks in the city, so not only could he guarantee that Freddy would get a mortgage, he could just as easily make sure he didn’t. Our family was effectively trapped in that run-down apartment in Jamaica.
When June rolled around, my father was more than ready to spend the summer in Montauk again. My parents rented the same cottage, and with funds he raised by selling some of his blue-chip stocks, Dad bought a Chrisovich 33, which, with its sixteen-foot tuna tower, was much more suited to handle the kind of deep-sea fishing he loved. He also bought another plane, this time a Cessna 206 Stationair, which had a more powerful engine and a larger seating