Margaret's Journal
Boston, Massachusetts 26 years ago

He was a wonderful liar. The best. If I'd been thirty rather than just barely turned twenty, I still don't think it would have mattered. He was so good, you see. At the beginning, of course. Not at the end. At the end there'd been no need for lies. Uncle Ralph and Aunt Josie had taken me to the only French restaurant in New Milford and they'd tried to make things normal and fun for me and there'd been a birthday cake and champagne. And I smiled and thanked them because I knew how hard they were trying. I didn't cry because I knew if I did, Aunt Josie would cry too, because my mother had been her only sister. And two nights later on a hot Friday evening in June, I first saw him at the McGills' party.

His name was Dominick Giovanni, a very rich businessman, according to the hostess, Rhonda McGill, and even though he was a full Italian, he didn't really look all that dark, did he? Probably, she whispered to everyone, he was northern Italian. The way Rhonda was looking at him, I guessed he could have been full-blooded anything and it wouldn't have mattered. He was very polite in a cool, aloof way to the men, charming to the women, indeed gracious to everyone, as though he, not Paul McGill, were the host. Then he saw me, and that started it all. He was the most incredibly sensual man I'd ever met.

I've never kept a diary before, or a journal or whatever one calls it. I like the sound of "journal" better. It sounds more thoughtful, somehow, perhaps more profound.

Which is quite silly, of course. My actions have proved to me my own depths. But no matter. Today, the fourteenth of March, you are eleven months old, my darling; and we're living on old and stolid Charles Street near Louisburg Square in my parents' brownstone. Now mine. Ours.

They're dead, killed instantly I was told -- some comfort, I suppose -- but how does one really know how long it takes someone to die? They were very rich, and their pilot, August, had drunk too much whiskey and plowed the Cessna into a vineyard in the south of France. That happened in May. Dominick happened in June.

It's a good thing there's no law against a very stupid girl writing about her stupidity. But I mustn't forget that I'm writing this for myself, not for you, Rafaella, even though it may appear that way. No, I'm merely writing at you. But you will never read this. It seems easier this way, I guess. I'm writing everything down so I don't keep choking on my own fury, my hatred of myself, my hatred of him. I believe it's called catharsis, this getting things out of one and bringing them out in the open.

Perhaps I'm not quite so stupid after all. But I can't, I won't, allow my hatred for him to come between us or to touch you in any way. You're innocent; you don't deserve it. Maybe I don't either.

But then there was Dominick, and I fell in love with him on the spot.

How absurd that sounds -- to fall in love, a condition in which a female suspends all rational thought and becomes willingly besotted, a victim, really, with not much of a separate identity from that perfect man. Actually, in defense of my stupidity, I was more lonely than you can imagine. I was grieving for my parents. I loved them, more dutifully than emotionally perhaps, but when people die so violently and so suddenly, you don't really care exactly how it was that you loved them.

So I came to New Milford to stay for a while with my Aunt Josie and Uncle Ralph. They're nice people but they have their own interests. Obsession, rather. They'd probably up and fly to Cuba for a bridge tournament if they could. I was lonely, sad, and didn't have any friends in New Milford. These all sound like weak excuses, don't they? But they come so naturally. I can't help it. It was June 14 and I met Dominick Giovanni and fell in love.

Rafaella, I can't tell you how very different he was from all the college boys I'd dated at Wellesley. He was thirty-one years old. He dressed with sophistication and style, he was exquisitely polite, so handsome you just wanted to watch him -- nothing more, just to look at him. You have his eyes -- pale blue and clear as a cloudless day. And his hair was black as midnight, unlike yours, my darling, which is a lovely titian color from your grandmother Lucy. He admired me, he focused all his attention on me. He wooed me and I would have done anything for him. Anything at all.

And he said he'd marry me. And I was twenty years old and I gave him my virginity, not all that precious a commodity, but I can remember so clearly that first time, how he spoke so sweetly to me and went so slowly because, he said, he didn't want me to be frightened and he didn't want to hurt me. He didn't. It was wonderful. I remember he drove his white Thunderbird convertible north out of New Milford. He pulled me close and draped his hand over my shoulder. Then he slipped his fingers down the bodice of my sundress. Boys had done this before and I'd found it mildly diverting but embarrassing. And nothing had happened. But this time, with Dominick, my nipples got hard and it was because of his fingers, because of him. Then he smiled at me as he turned off the road onto a dirt stretch that led into a wooded area. He left me in the car and opened the trunk. He pulled out a blanket and told me to come with him. He spread the blanket out on a bed of daisies -- white daisies -- and there were shafts of sunlight spearing through the maple trees and I was on my back and he told me to lift my hips and I did and he pulled my panties off. Then he sat back on his heels and I saw he was looking at me. Then he stood up and took off his clothes, all of them. I'd never seen a nude man in real life before. His penis was huge and I thought: No, this is impossible. I'm making a horrible mistake.

But he merely sat beside me and pulled my sundress over my head. Then he lay on his back and pulled me against him. He just talked to me and told me how sweet I was, how dear I was to him, and how he was going to teach me wonderful new things. And he did. It didn't hurt when he came inside me, not really. I took every inch of his penis, and when he was as deep as he could go, he smiled and told me to lift my hips. I didn't come that first time, but I didn't care. But he did. He taught me quite a lot about myself that afternoon. I trusted him completely.

No, I suppose I couldn't have trusted him, not completely, because I didn't ever tell him who I really was and that I was very rich. I was my parents' only child, and upon their deaths I had so much money it was difficult for me to even comprehend it and the lawyer had told me that I should never volunteer who I was, never say I was Margaret Chamberlain Holland of Boston. What he meant too, of course, was that I should never volunteer what I was worth. Uncle Ralph and Aunt Josie had even introduced me using their name -- Pennington, not Holland. I guess they were concerned because I was so young. I didn't tell anyone the truth, not even Dominick. I wonder if that would have made a difference. I doubt it. Dominick was many things, but a fortune hunter he wasn't.

And at the close of that magic summer, I was pregnant with you, Rafaella.

I was terrified but Dominick seemed pleased about it. Then he dropped the bomb. He was married, and couldn't marry me -- just yet. It turned out that he and his wife had been separated for years and years. And I told him that he didn't have years and years and he laughed and told me how wonderful I was and how understanding and how I was so different from his wife. He left, to attend to business, he said, to get the divorce proceedings in motion, he said. He left me in New Milford, to face my aunt and uncle and the music. But he came back every couple of weeks to see me. He never came to the house. I always met him at a different hotel or motel in and around New Milford. And every time, he'd bring me to an orgasm and I'd forget my worry, my anxiety, until after he'd gone.

All of this sounds so stupid. So boringly stupid and trite, but that's how it happened. And then you were born and he returned again and visited me in the hospital in Hartford. He stood beside my bed and smiled down at me. And I'll never forget his words for as long as I live. But I still want to write them down, just in case, one day, in the distant future, I'm tempted to look back at this and romanticize it.

"You're looking well, Margaret," he said, and took my hand, kissing my fingers.

I swelled with relief even though he'd said nothing important.

"We have a daughter, Dominick."

"Yes, so I was told."

"You haven't seen her?"

"No, there's no need."

"Perhaps not at this moment. Are you free now? Can we get married? I want my daughter to know her wonderful father."

"That's not possible, Margaret." He released my hand and took two steps away from the bed.

"You're not divorced yet?" Odd how I knew what was coming, despite my ignorance. Oh, yes, I knew. Perhaps motherhood brings a little insight, a little wisdom with it.

He shook his head and he was still smiling down at me. "No," he said, "I'm not divorced and I don't intend to divorce my wife even though she bores me and tries to spend more money than even I make. You're very young, Margaret. I've enjoyed you. Perhaps I would have married you if you'd birthed a boy, but you didn't. My wife is pregnant now. Isn't that strange timing? Perhaps she'll give me a boy. I hope so."

"She's your daughter!"

He shrugged. He did nothing more, just shrugged. And then he said, that smile still on his mouth, "Daughters aren't good for much, Margaret. You need boys to build dynasties, and that's what I've always wanted. A girl is good for cementing certain deals and for leverage, but things have changed and you can't be certain that you can control your daughters, make them do what you want them to. Who knows? Twenty years from now daughters might go against everything their fathers tell them. No, Margaret, a girl is worth less than nothing to me."

I just stared at him, frozen. "Who are you? What kind of man are you?"

"A very smart man." And he tossed a check for five thousand dollars on the bed. I watched it float down until it touched the stiff hospital sheet. "Good-bye, Margaret." And he was gone.

I didn't cry, not then. I remember so clearly picking up that check and looking at it and then very slowly tearing it into tiny, tiny pieces. I was so happy that I hadn't told him about my inheritance, so relieved I hadn't told him who I really was. Perhaps I'd known all along what he would do. Perhaps I'd instinctively kept back my only valuable secret. Perhaps...