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Show And so I resigned from my teaching post and read the Bible again as my belly grew. Brian quit his part-time job as a bartender A and he was "home more often. Sometimes he was attentive - stroking my hair, rubbing my neck, calling me at midday. I warmed toward him and my heart opened like tulip, tentative in the rain. One evening, while playing pinochle with Danny and his wife, I reached out to touch Brian's knee and instead found a bare foot upon his lap. My hand jerked back as though I had touched a laUlusnake" irr-a spider. I looked up into the startled, flushed face of Danny's wife. "Oops. Was that you?" At first I wondered if she had been mistaken - if she had meant to place her foot in Danny's lap. Then I felt the blood rush darkly into my face, then leave again. I struggled to my feet, nearly upsetting the card-table. "This is disgusting." I letmy cards fall, scattered across the table, then left the room. In the bathroom I knelt, my eyes squeezed tight to hold back the tears, to darken this new, terrible intimation of an understanding. Humiliation overtook me and the tears spilled down my cheeks. "Oh God," I whispered. "Do I deserve this? Do I really deserve this?" I had tried to avoid the realization for a long time - the knowledge that Brian shamelessly flirted with any woman around, even my friends. I was almost afraid to have friends that were beatuiful or attractive. But I had continued to reach out to the world, trusting in them, not in him. I rationalised that he was shell-shocked and out of |