Carver - What we talk about when we talk about love and Beginners

Raymond Carver was born in Clatskanie, Oregon, in 1938. His first collection of stories, Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? (a National Book Award nominee in 1977), was followed by What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, Cathedral (nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in 1984), and Where Im Calling From in 1988, when he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He died August 2, 1988, shortly after completing the poems of A New Path to the Waterfall.

FICTION

Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?

Furious Seasons and Other Stories

What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

Cathedral

Where Im Calling From

POETRY

Near Klamath

Winter Insomnia

At Night the Salmon Move

Where Water Comes Together with Other Water

Ultramarine

A New Path to the Waterfall

PROSE AND POETRY

Fires: Essays, Poems, and Stories

POSTHUMOUSLY PUBLISHED

Short Cuts: Selected Stories

Call If You Need Me: The Uncollected Fiction and Other Prose

All of Us: The Collected Poems

What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver, copyright 1981 by Tess Gallagher

Beginners by Raymond Carver, copyright 2009 by Tess Gallagher

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada, a division of Penguin Random House of Canada Ltd., Toronto. What We Talk About When We Talk About Love previously published in hardcover as a part of What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, in 1981. Beginners previously published in hardcover as part of Beginners by Library of America, New York, in 2009.

Vintage and colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

The Cataloging-in-Publication Data for What We Talk About When We Talk About Love and Beginners is available from the Library of Congress.

Vintage eShort ISBN: 978-1-101-97047-8

Series cover design by Joan Wong

www.vintagebooks.com

v3.1

What We Talk About
When We Talk About Love

M Y friend Mel McGinnis was talking. Mel McGinnis is a cardiologist, and sometimes that gives him the right.

The four of us were sitting around his kitchen table drinking gin. Sunlight filled the kitchen from the big window behind the sink. There were Mel and me and his second wife, TeresaTerri, we called herand my wife, Laura. We lived in Albuquerque then. But we were all from somewhere else.

There was an ice bucket on the table. The gin and the tonic water kept going around, and we somehow got on the subject of love. Mel thought real love was nothing less than spiritual love. He said hed spent five years in a seminary before quitting to go to medical school. He said he still looked back on those years in the seminary as the most important years in his life.

Terri said the man she lived with before she lived with Mel loved her so much he tried to kill her. Then Terri said, He beat me up one night. He dragged me around the living room by my ankles. He kept saying, I love you, I love you, you bitch. He went on dragging me around the living room. My head kept knocking on things. Terri looked around the table. What do you do with love like that?

She was a bone-thin woman with a pretty face, dark eyes, and brown hair that hung down her back. She liked necklaces made of turquoise, and long pendant earrings.

My God, dont be silly. Thats not love, and you know it, Mel said. I dont know what youd call it, but I sure know you wouldnt call it love.

Say what you want to, but I know it was, Terri said. It may sound crazy to you, but its true just the same. People are different, Mel. Sure, sometimes he may have acted crazy. Okay. But he loved me. In his own way maybe, but he loved me. There was love there, Mel. Dont say there wasnt.

Mel let out his breath. He held his glass and turned to Laura and me. The man threatened to kill me, Mel said. He finished his drink and reached for the gin bottle. Terris a romantic. Terris of the kick-me-so-Ill-know-you-love-me school. Terri, hon, dont look that way. Mel reached across the table and touched Terris cheek with his fingers. He grinned at her.

Now he wants to make up, Terri said.

Make up what? Mel said. What is there to make up? I know what I know. Thats all.

Howd we get started on this subject, anyway? Terri said. She raised her glass and drank from it. Mel always has love on his mind, she said. Dont you, honey? She smiled, and I thought that was the last of it.

I just wouldnt call Eds behavior love. Thats all Im saying, honey, Mel said. What about you guys? Mel said to Laura and me. Does that sound like love to you?

Im the wrong person to ask, I said. I didnt even know the man. Ive only heard his name mentioned in passing. I wouldnt know. Youd have to know the particulars. But I think what youre saying is that love is an absolute.

Mel said, The kind of love Im talking about is. The kind of love Im talking about, you dont try to kill people.

Laura said, I dont know anything about Ed, or anything about the situation. But who can judge anyone elses situation?

I touched the back of Lauras hand. She gave me a quick smile. I picked up Lauras hand. It was warm, the nails polished, perfectly manicured. I encircled the broad wrist with my fingers, and I held her.

WHEN I left, he drank rat poison, Terri said. She clasped her arms with her hands. They took him to the hospital in Santa Fe. Thats where we lived then, about ten miles out. They saved his life. But his gums went crazy from it. I mean they pulled away from his teeth. After that, his teeth stood out like fangs. My God, Terri said. She waited a minute, then let go of her arms and picked up her glass.

What people wont do! Laura said.

Hes out of the action now, Mel said. Hes dead.

Mel handed me the saucer of limes. I took a section, squeezed it over my drink, and stirred the ice cubes with my finger.

It gets worse, Terri said. He shot himself in the mouth. But he bungled that too. Poor Ed, she said. Terri shook her head.

Poor Ed nothing, Mel said. He was dangerous.

Mel was forty-five years old. He was tall and rangy with curly soft hair. His face and arms were brown from the tennis he played. When he was sober, his gestures, all his movements, were precise, very careful.

He did love me though, Mel. Grant me that, Terri said. Thats all Im asking. He didnt love me the way you love me. Im not saying that. But he loved me. You can grant me that, cant you?

What do you mean, he bungled it? I said.