Too Much and Never Enough, стр. 38
Dad told my grandfather about the plans for the party a few days later when the three of us were in the breakfast room, the ubiquitous clippings covering the table. “Fred,” he said angrily, “Donald’s busy, he doesn’t need this bullshit.”
The subtext was clear: Donald is important, and he’s doing important things; you’re not.
I don’t know how the situation got resolved, but Dad eventually pulled it off. I was going to have my party.
Most of my guests had arrived and I was standing with a small group of friends when Donald made his entrance. He walked over to us, and instead of saying hello, he spread his arms and said, “Isn’t this great?”
We all agreed that it was, indeed, great. I thanked him again for letting us use the hotel, then introduced him to everybody.
“So what’d you think of that lobby? Fantastic, right?”
“Fantastic,” I said. My friends nodded.
“Nobody else could have pulled this off. Just look at those windows.”
I worried that he might tell us how great the bathroom tiles were next, but he saw my grandparents, shook my hand, kissed me on the cheek, said, “Have fun, Honeybunch,” and walked over to them. My dad was sitting a couple of tables away from them, by himself.
When I turned back to my friends, they were staring at me.
“What the hell was that?” one of them asked.
In the summer of 1981, Maryanne drove my father to the Carrier Clinic in Belle Mead, New Jersey, about half an hour from the Bedminster property that Donald would later turn into a golf course. Dad went through the thirty-day program, but he did it reluctantly. At the end of his stay, Maryanne and her second husband, John Barry, picked him up and brought him back to the House, arguably the worst place he could be. When she checked on him the next day, Dad had already started drinking again.
Freddy had lost his home and family, his profession, much of his willpower, and most of his friends. Eventually his parents were the only people left to take care of him. And they resented it. In the end, Freddy’s very existence infuriated his father.
Fred’s treatment of my father had always served as an object lesson to his other children—a warning. In the end, though, the control became something much different. Fred wielded the complete power of the torturer, but he was ultimately as trapped in the circumstance of Freddy’s growing dependence due to his alcoholism and declining health as Freddy was tied to him. Fred had no imagination and no ability to see a way beyond the circumstances he was essentially responsible for having created. The situation was proof that his power had limits.
After I got home from summer camp that August, I announced that I wanted to go to boarding school. I explained to Dad that after ten years at Kew-Forest, the same extremely small school my aunts and uncles had gone to, I was feeling hemmed in and bored. I wanted more of a challenge, a place with a campus, better sports facilities, more opportunities. Dad warned me about the dangers of becoming a small fish in a big pond, but I think he understood that although my stated reasons were all true, I also needed to get away.
The problem was that I had only three weeks to figure out where I wanted to go, fill out applications, and get accepted. Over the last two weeks of August 1981, my mother and I visited almost every boarding school in Connecticut and Massachusetts.
While I waited for the results, we needed to get permission from my grandfather, or at least that’s what Dad said.
The two of us stood in front of my grandfather’s usual spot on the love seat, and Dad explained what I wanted to do. “What does she want to do that for?” my grandfather asked, as if I weren’t standing right in front of him. “Kew-Forest is fine.” He’d been on the board there for almost thirty years.
“It’s just time for a change. Come on, Pop. It’ll be good for her.”
My grandfather complained about the extra expense, even though the money would come from my father’s trust fund and wouldn’t affect him at all, and he reiterated his belief in the superiority of Kew-Forest. But Dad didn’t back down.
I don’t think my grandfather really cared where I went to school, but I was grateful that Dad had stood by my side once again.
The day before heading to boarding school, I left the apartment at the Highlander and rode my bike to my grandparents’ house. I coasted down the driveway, propped my bike against the high brick wall next to the garage, then climbed the stairs to the path leading to the back door.
The backyard was quiet in the early-September afternoon. I jumped up the two steps to the cement patio and rang the doorbell. There was no outdoor furniture, just an empty slab. The only person who’d ever used it when we were younger was my uncle Rob. At one time there had been a couple of wrought-iron chairs out there, and when he was home for the weekend, he’d pull them together, and, using one as a footrest, he’d slather himself with baby oil and prop his folding aluminum tanning reflector under his chin.
Minutes passed. I was about to press the doorbell again when my grandmother finally answered the door. She seemed surprised to see me. I pulled the screen door toward me to enter, but Gam remained in the doorway.
“Hi, Gam. I’m here to see Dad.”
Gam stood there wiping her hands on her apron, tense, as if I’d just caught her at something. I reminded her