What We Talk About When We Talk About Love: Stories

Talk About When We Talk About Love
    "Just go," Maxine said.
    'Tm leaving this nuthouse," L.D. said.
    He made his way into the bedroom and took one of her suitcases from the closet. It was an old white Naugahyde suitcase with a broken clasp. She'd used to pack it full of sweater sets and carry it with her to college. He had gone to college too. He threw the suitcase onto the bed and began putting in his underwear, his trousers, his shirts, his sweaters, his old leather belt with the brass buckle, his socks, and everything else he had. From, the nightstand he took magazines for reading material. He took the ashtray. He put everything he could into the suitcase, everything it could hold. He fastened the one good side, secured the strap, and then he remembered his bathroom things. He found the vinyl shaving bag up on the closet shelf behind her hats. Into it went his razor and his shaving cream, his talcum powder and his stick deodorant and his toothbrush. He took the toothpaste, too. And then he got the dental floss.
    H E could hear them in the living room talking in their low voices.
    He washed his face. He put the soap and towel into the shaving bag. Then he put in the soap dish and the glass from over the sink and the fingernail clippers and her eyelash curlers.
    He couldn't get the shaving bag closed, but that was okay. He put on his coat and picked up the suitcase. He went into the living room.
    When she saw him, Maxine put her arm around Rae's shoulders.
    One More Thing
    "This is it," L.D. said. "This is good-bye," he said. "I don't know what else to say except I guess I'll never see you again. You too," L.D. said to Rae. "You and your crackpot ideas."
    "Go," Maxine said. She took Rae's hand. "Haven't you done enough damage in this house already? Go on, L.D. Get out of here and leave us in peace."
    "Just remember," Rae said. "It's in your head."
    "I'm going, that's all I can say," L.D. said. "Anyplace. Away from this nuthouse," he said. "That's the main thing."
    He took a last look around the living room and then he moved the suitcase from one hand to the other and put the shaving bag under his arm. "I'll be in touch, Rae. Maxine, you're better off out of this nuthouse yourself."
    "You made it into a nuthouse," Maxine said. "If it's a nuthouse, then that's what you made it."
    He put the suitcase down and the shaving bag on top of the suitcase. He drew himself up and faced them.
    They moved back.
    "Watch it, Mom," Rae said.
    "I'm not afraid of him," Maxine said.
    L.D. put the shaving bag under his arm and picked up the suitcase.
    He said, "I just want to say one more thing."
    But then he could not think what it could possibly be.
    ABOUT THE AUTHOR
    Raymond Carver was born in Clatskanie, Oregon, in 1939, and lived in Port Angeles, Washington, until his death on August 2, 1988. He was a Guggenheim Fellow in 1979 and was twice awarded grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. In 1983 Carver received the prestigious Mildred and Harold Strauss Living Award, and in 1985 Poetry magazine's Levinson Prize. In 1988 he was elected to the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters and awarded a Doctorate of Letters from Hartford University. He received a Brandeis Citation in fiction for 1988. His work has been translated into more than twenty languages.
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    "The most vigorous poems in this new collection function as distilled, heightened versions of his stories, offering us fugitive glimpses of ordinary lives on the edge." —The New York Times
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