Talking About Love

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story. The subplots revolve around the two main couples in the story, and another couple that is introduced by one of the characters near the end of the story. The first couple, Mel and Terri, had been in very bad relationships before meeting one another. They have been together for five years, and married for four. Mel’s marriage to his ex-wife Marjorie apparently ended on a very bad note. Carver states near the end of “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love,” “’She’s allergic to bees,’ Mel said. ‘If I’m not praying she’ll get married again, I’m praying she’ll get herself stung to death by a swarm of fucking bees” (444). Clearly whatever love Mel once felt for his ex-wife has evaporated. Terri also suffered through a bad relationship at the hands of an abusive man named Ed. Terri and Mel argue over Terri’s belief that Ed really did love her, though not in a way that was healthy to her ...

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need or desire to be with each other. Moramarco refers to this situation as “Serial, transient love.” During the course of the conversation, Mel introduces the third couple later in the story, by telling Nick and Laura a story about them. Moramarco describes the way in which they are compared with the other two couples: “Both Mel and Terri on the one hand, and Nick and Laura on the other—as well as Mel and Marjorie and Terri and Ed—are contrasted with yet another couple referred to in the story, an elderly couple in their mid-seventies who have been in an auto accident. Significantly, their camper was slammed by a teenage drunk driver who was killed ...

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