What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

“You should have seen the way we lived in those days. Like fugitives.”

Mel says this about his and Terri’s attempts to hide from Ed. Terri agrees, which is her only admission that she feared her ex. Up until this point and after, she clings to the notion that his brutal behavior could be viewed in a positive light. Mel’s use of the word “fugitive” is curious, as this usually refers to people who have committed a crime and are running away to evade capture. Other meanings of the word are “ephemeral” and “transient,” tying into Mel’s comments about how easily love can end as well as his fear of death.

“‘He did love me though. Mel. Grant me that,’ Terri said. ‘That’s all I’m asking. He didn’t love me the way you love me. I’m not saying that. But he loved me. You can grant me that, can’t you?’”

Terri is looking for validation from Mel that Ed’s behavior was based on true love. However, she becomes more unsure of her own beliefs as Mel challenges her. She questions how they got on to the subject, even though she brought it up in the first place. Locked into a cycle of toxicity, she is unable to move beyond what has happened in the past. However, she raises an important point that thematically develops The Inability to Define Love: They should acknowledge that there are different forms of love.

“‘He was dangerous,’ Mel said. ‘If you call that love, you can have it.’

‘It was love,’ Terri said. ‘Sure, it’s abnormal in most people’s eyes. But he was willing to die for it. He did die for it.’”

This exchange thematically shows how Talking About Love Is Ineffectual. Mel and Terri have a fundamental disagreement about what love means. For Terri, love means intensity and passion. Ed feels so deeply toward her that he is prepared to die for it, and to her, there is no greater way to prove your love. Mel has the opposite point of view and almost suggests that he would rather do without love than have that kind of relationship. The couple fails to find common ground and understanding.

“‘What do any of us really know about love?’ Mel said. ‘It seems to me we’re just beginners at love.’”

Before George Lish edited Carver’s manuscript, the original title of the collection and its titular story was Beginners. Mel goes on to list different types of love: physical, carnal, and sentimental, or “the day-to-day caring about the other person” (131). However, he struggles to reconcile his previous love for Marjorie along with Terri’s previous love for Ed. He determines that his love has turned to hate, but he can’t explain how that could happen. Because love is an abstract experience, the title suggests that everyone is a beginner at love because all love is different.

“And the terrible thing, the terrible thing is, but the good thing too, the saving grace, you might say, is that if something happened to one of us tomorrow, I think…the other person, would grieve for a while, you know, but then the surviving party would go out and love again, have someone else soon enough.”

Mel struggles to make sense of how it’s possible to love one person but then go on to love someone else equally as much, if not more so. His repetitive language reflects his uncertainty. Mel’s growing sense of mystification around the subject of love contrasts with his dogmatic views at the start of the story. The term “saving grace” refers to his life in the seminary when he was happiest. Mel can only grasp the spiritual love between an individual and God, not love between human beings. Mel’s interpretation of love implies that his marriage with Terri is not enduring.

“All this, all of this love we’re talking about, it would just be a memory. Maybe not even a memory. Am I wrong? Am I way off base? Because I want you to set me straight if you think I’m wrong. I want to know. I mean, I don’t know anything and I’m the first one to admit it.”

Mel’s uncertainty is at the fore, underscoring the theme of The Inability to Define Love. Like Terri, he wants others to validate his views. Instead of assurances, Mel receives criticisms. Terri dismisses Mel as intoxicated. As a result, Mel reaches for the anecdote about the elderly couple to finally prove his interpretation of love.

“It ought to make us feel ashamed when we talk like we know what we’re talking about when we talk about love.”

Through repetition, Mel mentions the title of the story and thematically develops The Inability to Define Love. At this juncture, the four characters cannot form a consensus about the meaning of love. Mel remarks that they are all “just talking” to mask the difficulties of communication and their inability to reach a common ground. In a broader context, the implication is that the characters are unable to understand the meaning of their existence.

“If I could come back in a different life, a different time and all, you know what? I’d like to come back as a knight. You were pretty safe wearing all that armor. It was all right being a knight until gunpowder and muskets and pistoles came along.”

Mel’s comment reveals his desire to feel protected. He wants to escape into a romanticized notion of the past. In his fantasy, women hand him their scarves as tokens of admiration. Shortly after, Mel mentions how easily it would be to fall in love with Laura and to carry her off, almost as if he were a white knight. Mel’s digression illustrates his inability to reconcile reality and thematically shows how Talking About Love Is Ineffectual.

“But what I liked about knights, besides their ladies, was that they had that suit of armor, you know, and they couldn’t get hurt very easy. No cars in those days, you know? No drunk teenagers to tear into your ass.”

Mel is concerned throughout the story with the tenuous hold that human beings have on life, which his profession as a surgeon makes apparent. At any moment, an external force could change our life’s direction. This sentiment mirrors Mel’s views on love. He believes that nothing, including love, is eternal.

“‘He’s just a humble sawbones,’ I said. ‘But sometimes they suffocated in all that armor, Mel. They’d even have heart attacks if it got too hot and they were too tired and worn out. I read somewhere that they’d fall off their horses and not be able to get up because they were too tired to stand with all that armor on them. They got trampled by their own horses sometimes.’”

This is the longest speech that Nick has in the story, and it’s telling. On one level, he wants to puncture Mel’s romantic view of life as a medieval knight. On another level, he is questioning his friend’s superiority, especially as a doctor. Mel has been reduced in the reader’s eyes from a respected cardiologist to “just a humble sawbones.” This term first appeared in Charles Dickens’s 1837 novel “The Pickwick Paper” and is a derogatory way of describing a doctor who carried out cruel and violent amputations in the 19th century. Nick even professes to know more about Mel’s specialist subject by explaining as if to a child that the knights’ armor would cause them to overheat and have heart attacks.

“I stared at the pattern they made on the panes and on the Formica counter. They weren’t the same patterns, of course.”

A recurring motif is light and dark. As the light changes, Nick notices how the pattern of the leaves outside looks different, depending on whether the light reflects onto the windowpanes or the counter. Each surface gives a fresh design. This is also true of the characters’ interpretations of love and their attempts to define it. Terri remains consistent—there is only one surface—whereas Mel changes his viewpoint depending on the three metaphorical articles he mentions: the knight’s armor, the beekeeper’s outfit, and the elderly couple’s plaster casts.

“I’m telling you, the man’s heart was breaking because he couldn’t turn his goddamn head and see his goddamn wife.”

Mel’s confusion about the meaning of love finally breaks down into a series of foul-mouthed repetitions. He is a cardiologist with years of training, but not even he can fully understand the elderly man’s heartache. This points out the disjunct between the tangible (physical heart) and the intangible (love), between what is knowable and what is unknowable. Mel’s frustration thematically underscores The Inability to Define Love.

“Sometimes I think I’ll go up there dressed like a beekeeper. You know, that hat that’s like a helmet with the plate that comes down over your face, the big gloves, and the padded coat? I’ll knock on the door and let loose a hive of bees in the house.”

Mel’s latent aggression rises up at this late stage in the story. Even though he’s spent much of the time disagreeing with Ed’s violent behavior, he too harbors a desire to terrify his ex-wife and unleash a dreadful death upon her. Again, Mel mentions another disguise that he can take on after fantasizing about himself as a medieval knight. The beekeeper’s outfit covers him from head to foot, like a knight’s armor, protecting him against death but also at the same time offering him anonymity.