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Empty Mansions

Empty Mansions

Titel: Empty Mansions Kostenlos Bücher Online Lesen
Autoren: Bill Dedman
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overstep the bounds of Huguette’s privacy. Once he used his cellphone to take a photograph of Hadassah at the hospital. When he asked to take a photo of Huguette, he said, “Madame flatly refused.”
    As for why she chose to abandon luxuries to stay in the hospital, Chris said that he, even after sixteen years of taking care of her precious possessions, “was never able to figure it out.”
    Huguette trusted Chris with the keys to her dear possessions: her castles and dolls and books, not to mention millions of dollars’ worth of rare paintings and violins. He described himself as “pathologically honest.” She paid him $90 an hour, a figure he suggested and she approved. In 2006, for example, he was paid $187,920, plus $18,000 for health insurance, $9,000 for his two daughters’ tuition to Catholic schools, and a $60,000 Christmas gift. Chris brought his wife and children to visit her once in the hospital, and she seemed to enjoy the conversation.
    “She was,” Chris said, “a sweetheart.”
NINTA

 
    T HE RECIPIENT of Huguette’s greatest charity was a memory from her childhood.
    Her governess, Madame Sandré, had a daughter, Ninta, who was just six months older than Huguette. Like Huguette, Ninta had an artistic spirit,studying dance in the 1920s with the celebrated Japanese dancer and choreographer Michio Ito and performing to Chopin at Carnegie Hall. Her Broadway debut at age twenty-five was reviewed by
The New York Times
less than eagerly: “Nearly all the numbers were extremely brief, occupying less time in some instances than the costume changes that preceded them. Miss Sandre has an agreeable manner and a youthful freshness, but she is scarcely ready as yet to subject her work to comparison with the standards of the metropolitan dance field.”
    Ninta worked for the Clarks off and on as a cook, and taught dance and French at a private school in Flushing, Queens, but later she was off on her own in New York City. By the time she was about eighty years old, Ninta had fallen on hard times. Living in Astoria, Queens, she had dementia and was often found digging through trash bins on the street.
    One evening in January 1987, before Huguette moved to Doctors Hospital, eighty-two-year-old Ninta was picked up by New York police and taken to Bellevue Hospital. She had Huguette’s home phone number in her possession, and Huguette was called. In turn, Huguette called her doctor, Myron Wright, arranging for him to take care of Ninta. At first Huguette paid for round-the-clock nursing care for Ninta at home, then for an apartment, then for Ninta to move into Amsterdam Nursing Home. She paid Ninta’s medical bills and sent flowers to Ninta’s nurses. Huguette had supported other friends and former employees, but this was a great deal more. For thirteen years, Huguette paid more than $200,000 a year for Ninta’s care. She also bought Ninta’s co-op apartment, although Ninta never recovered enough to return to it.
    Huguette’s go-between for these arrangements was Dr. Wright’s office manager, Lyn Strasheim. Huguette called often, courteous but insistent, wanting to know how Ninta was eating, what clothing she needed. She sent Ninta a television and French magazines, even though Ninta could no longer read or talk. Strasheim said Huguette never seemed to comprehend the severity of Ninta’s dementia.“Mrs. Clark wanted everything and anything done for her. Ninta had no quality of life, no pleasure in eating, no enjoyment of TV. She couldn’t get her hair cut because she behaved badly at the salon. When you explained that to Mrs. Clark, her solution to everything was to fix it, hire more staff, spend more. She thought that everything came with a price, that if you just paid more, everything could be solved.”
    $329,000 A MONTH

 
    Huguette Clark entered Doctors Hospital on March 26, 1991. The following expenditures, as documented in periodic reports sent to Huguette by attorney Don Wallace, cover a period of just over three and a half years, or forty-three months, from May 1991 through December 1994. Each dollar in 1992 had the buying power of about $1.70 today, so her monthly costs would be about $560,000 in 2013 dollars.
EXPENSE
TOTAL
PER MONTH
Medical expenses and payroll taxes
$2,226,745
$51,785
Le Beau Château, Connecticut
$146,377
$3,404
Bellosguardo, California
$1,725,945
$40,138
Servants’ wages at Fifth Avenue
$12,080
$281
Household bills at Fifth Avenue
$62,167
$1,446
Apartment renovation

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