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Show Moon -142 wouldn't save her any longer. James knew what it was and he had decided not to tell her, not believing, perhaps, in her need to know. James did not love her, that was part of it. Anne was finally able to say this aloud to herself. She'd never expected him to love her, but she'd hoped for it just the same. But how could someone love a person he'd never noticed, never seen? What she had most of all hoped for was something perhaps better than romantic love. Appreciation? Not exactly. It came down, she decided, to being believed. Yes, that was it. She needed to be believed for what she was-a woman still mourning her menses, a woman scared but willing to be brave, a woman who was alive enough to say: I feel this, I feel that, I fear this, I yearn for that, touch me here, come to our bed just once before you have a drink, don't laugh at me when I'm serious. Believe me when I speak. Believe in me. This my body. Know it. Use it kindly before it's gone. When I returned to New York from the cottage, I had a series of dreams about journeys back to some home, over narrow trestles that spanned bottomless chasms. Rocks clattered away from my feet like heavy birds; beams collapsed; railings gave way. Sometimes I had to scale the walls of buildings made of crumbling brick. I couldn't see because of a sulfurous haze that folded around me yellow and heavy like a smoke-stained curtain. Waiting for the subway, it seemed likely that a person could trip and fall onto the tracks. I avoided the edges of construction sites, for the girders rising on cranes tilted crazily, seemed about to crash down. Sometimes I forgot how to |