“Maybe I won’t call the kids, after all. Maybe it isn’t such a hot idea. Maybe we’ll just go eat. How does that sound?”
“Sounds fine to me,” I said. “Eat or not. Or keep drinking. I could head right on out into the sunset.”
“What does that mean, Honey?” Laura said.
“It just means what I said,” I said. “It means I could just keep going. That’s what it means.”
“I could eat something myself,” Laura said. “I don’t think I’ve ever been so hungry in my life. Is there something to nibble on?”
“I’ll put out some cheese and crackers,” Terri said.
But Terri just sat there. She did not get up to get anything.
Mel turned his glass over. He spilled it out on the table.
“Gin’s gone,” Mel said.
Terri said, “Now what?”
I could hear my heart beating. I could hear everyone’s heart. I could hear the human noise we sat there making, not one of us moving, not even when the room went dark. (Page 195 in Ann Charters – SIW: 7th)
Mel talks about calling the kids, he’s making an attempt to escape all of the confusion he has placed himself in through their discussions of love. He feels he understand the love between himself and his kids, and would rather have them on the mind. But then he decides it’d be a bad idea to call his kids, and that instead they should just go out to eat.
Nick now comes back with something I found very intriguing, and was the reason why I chose to focus on this piece of the story—the ending. With his statement of “Eat or not eat. Or keep drinking. I could head right out into the sunset.” This statement of uncertainty shows that he doesn’t know what he wants, and that they’re clearly not really talking about eating food, they’re talking about love; this is just what they talk about when they talk about love. It’d be a bit ridiculous to go from such a discussion of love to eating. When nick says, “I could head right out into the sunset,” I imagine him just leaving Laura and all of their “love” and troubles behind. He’s very disconnected and would rather just go with whatever else he finds. Love doesn’t have him. Laura notices this too, and calls him out on it in the next line. Then, he responds to her question exactly as he had before, he seems to be done with this lovey-dovey bullshit, he is ready to be honest with himself and her. Laura ignores this and just goes back to Mel’s comment about eating, and says she could go for the same, but in a way is responding to Nick at the same time, but on the figurative level; they’re all hungry for love.
“Is there something to nibble on?” Laura says, rhetorically. I feel that Carver is really saying, “Where is this real love I demand, why must I dabble in these masquerades where love has become a cliché? I’m through with the pretending!”
Unexpectedly Terri responds with “I’ll put out some cheese and crackers,” but never gets up or does anything. She doesn’t get love either, and is feeling hurt herself. She’s doesn’t know what she’s in, but knows that this is not true love. She wants something “to nibble on.” She doesn’t know how to respond to Laura, so she says, “I’ll put out some cheese and crackers,” in attempt to lighten the mood.
“Mel turned his glass over.” Showing that he’s done with this gin, it won’t fill him up–he’ll still be hungry when the glass goes empty. They’re all hungry, but they continue to drink. There’s a parallel in the story of how he keeps drinking when he’s hungry to how they keep in the “love” they’re in when they really desire to be in real love. They want something, but keep telling themselves that what they have is all they need. Mel gets sick of his emptiness, and how no matter how much he has he’ll still be hungry. He pours out the rest and says, “Gin’s gone,” telling the others that he’s done with this posing, that he wants the real thing. Earlier he so easily explained the absurd story of love, with the old couple, and made himself feel so certain of what love was, but in the end shows that all he knows is another thing that isn’t love.
Terri’s response of “now what?” made me think they were on the same page, they both realized that what they have won’t work anymore, that what they have isn’t love and they don’t need this.
They all have this silence between them, where they are just human beings with beating hearts, there is no love in the room, and they all breakdown to be just human beings without any other relation.
There sits Nick with the three of them, he only can tell you his view and his ideas, but it is clear they are all feeling what he is feeling. They all feel cheated by these emotions, and that they’re giving up on them. I saw them as four hearts literally just sitting at a table as time goes by, just one long moment of four lost bodies, making human noise. The room goes dark, hiding them all from one another, and making them together in their loneliness. They are all together, but only by being alone—being hidden and silent.
In my short story class we had to pick a focus point in our final stories for examination, and I had chosen What We Talk about When We Talk about Love by Raymond Carver, which I found to be something I could relate to from my first time reading through. After maybe five to seven full reads, when all the excerpts I read had been put together, I came up with this view on the ending’s meaning. I may be able to go back now and find new ideas, but I liked this simple break down. I was glad I found all of my essays when cleaning out my laptop’s disk space—Good thing I didn’t just delete folders.
Michael
