Beginners by Raymond Carver

“What do any of us really know about love?” Herb said. “I kind of mean what I’m saying, too, if you’ll pardon me for saying it. But it seems to me we’re just rank beginners at love. We say we love each other and we do, I don’t doubt it. We love each other and we love hard, all of us. I love Terri and Terri loves me, and you guys love each other. You know the kind of love I’m talking about now. Sexual love, that attraction to the other person, the partner, as well as just the plain everyday kind of love, love of the other person’s being, the loving to be with the other, the little things that make up everyday love. Carnal love, then and, well, call it sentimental love, the day-to-day caring about the other. But sometimes I have a hard time accounting for the fact that I must have loved my first wife, too. But I did, I know I did. So I guess before you can say anything, I am like Terri in that regard. Terri and Carl.” He thought about it a minute and then went on, “But at one time I thought I loved my first wife more than life itself, and we had the kids together. But now I hate her guts. I do. How do you figure that? What happened to that love? Did that love just get erased from the big board, as if it was never up there, as if it never happened? What happened to it is what I’d like to know. I wish someone could tell me. Then there’s Carl. O.K., we’re back to Carl. He loved Terri so much he tries to kill her and winds up killing himself.” He stopped talking and shook his head. “You guys have been together eighteen months and you love each other, it shows all over you, you simply glow with it, but you’ve loved other people, too, before you met each other. You’ve both been married before, just like us. And you probably loved other people before that. Terri and I have been together five years, been married for four. 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—excuse me for saying this—but if something happened to one of us tomorrow, I think the other one, the other partner, would mourn for a while, you know, but then the surviving party would go out and love again, have someone else soon enough and all this, all of this love—Jesus, how can you figure it?—it would just be memory. Maybe not even memory. Maybe that’s the way it’s supposed to be. But am I wrong? Am I way off base? I know that’s what would happen with us, with Terri and me, as much as we may love each other. With any one of us for that matter. I’ll stick my neck out that much. We’ve all proved it anyhow. I just don’t understand. Set me straight if you think I’m wrong. I want to know. I don’t know anything, and I’m the first to admit it.” -Complete Short Story