Beginners

by Raymond Carver

  “Diabetes, too,” Bea said. “Epilepsy. Anything! The brain is the most powerful organ in the body. It can do anything you ask it to do.” She picked up his cigarettes from the table and lit one for herself.

  “Cancer. What about cancer?” L.D. said. “Can it stop you from getting cancer? Bea?” He thought he might have her there. He looked at Maxine. “I don’t know how we got started on this,” he said.

  “Cancer,” Bea said and shook her head at his simplicity. “Cancer, too. If a person wasn’t afraid of getting cancer, he wouldn’t get cancer. Cancer starts in the brain, Dad.”

  “That’s crazy!” he said and hit the table with the flat of his hand. The ashtray jumped. His glass fell on its side and rolled toward Bea. “You’re crazy, Bea, do you know that? Where’d you pick up all this crap? That’s what it is too. It’s crap, Bea.”

  “That’s enough, L.D.,” Maxine said. She unbuttoned her coat and put her purse down on the counter. She looked at him and said, “L.D., I’ve had it. So has Bea. So has everyone who knows you. I’ve been thinking it over. I want you out of here. Tonight. This minute. And I’m doing you a favor, L.D. I want you out of the house now before they come and carry you out in a pine box. I want you to leave, L.D. Now,” she said. “Someday you’ll look back on this. Someday you’ll look back and thank me.”

  L.D. said, “I will, will I? Someday I’ll look back,” he said. “You think so, do you?” L.D. had no intention of going anywhere, in a pine box or otherwise. His gaze switched from Maxine to a jar of pickles that had been on the table since lunch. He picked up the jar and hurled it past the refrigerator through the kitchen window. Glass shattered onto the floor and windowsill, and pickles flew out into the chill night. He gripped the edge of the table.

  Bea had jumped away from her chair. “God, Dad! You’re the crazy one,” she said. She stood beside her mother and took in little breaths through her mouth.

  “Call the police,” Maxine said. “He’s violent. Get out of the kitchen before he hurts you. Call the police,” she said.

  They started backing out of the kitchen. For a moment L.D. was insanely reminded of two old people retreating, the one in her nightgown and robe, the other in a black coat that reached to her knees.

  “I’m going, Maxine,” he said. “I’m going, right now. It suits me to a tee. You’re nuts here, anyway. This is a nuthouse. There’s another life out there. Believe me, this is not the only life.” He could feel the draft of air from the window on his face. He closed his eyes and opened them. He still had his hands on the edge of the table and was rocking the table back and forth on its legs as he spoke.

  “I hope not,” Maxine said. She’d stopped in the kitchen doorway. Bea edged around her into the other room. “God knows, every day I pray there’s another life.”

  “I’m going,” he said. He kicked his chair and stood up from the table. “You won’t see me again, either.”

  “You’ve left me plenty to remember you by, L.D.,” Maxine said. She was in the living room now. Bea stood next to her. Bea looked disbelieving and scared. She held her mother’s coat sleeve in the fingers of one hand, her cigarette in the fingers of her other hand.

  “God, Dad, we were just talking,” she said.

  “Go on now, get out, L.D.,” Maxine said. “I’m paying the rent here, and I’m saying go. Now.”

  “I’m going,” he said. “Don’t push me,” he said. “I’m going.”

  “Don’t do anything else violent, L.D.,” Maxine said. “We know you’re strong when it comes to breaking things.”

  “Away from here,” L.D. said. “I’m leaving this nuthouse.”

  He made his way into the bedroom and took one of her suitcases from the closet. It was an old brown Naugahyde suitcase with a broken clasp. She used to pack it full of Jantzen sweaters and carry it with her to college. He’d gone to college too. That had been years ago and somewhere else. He threw the suitcase onto the bed and began putting in his underwear, trousers and long-sleeved shirts, sweaters, an old leather belt with a brass buckle, all of his socks and handkerchiefs. From the nightstand he took magazines for reading material. He took the ashtray. He put everything he could into the suitcase, everything it would hold. He fastened the one good side of the suitcase, secured the strap, and then remembered his bathroom things. He found the vinyl shaving bag up on the closet shelf behind Maxine’s hats. The shaving bag had been a birthday gift from Bea a year or so back. Into it went his razor and shaving cream, his talcum powder and stick deodorant, his toothbrush. He took the toothpaste too. He could hear Maxine and Bea in the living room talking in low voices. After he washed his face and used the towel, he put the bar of soap into the shaving bag. Then he added the soap dish and the glass from over the sink. It occurred to him that if he had some cutlery and a tin plate, he could keep going for a long time. He couldn’t close the shaving bag, but he was ready. He put on his coat and picked up the suitcase. He went into the living room. Maxine and Bea stopped talking. Maxine put her arm around Bea’s shoulders.

  “This is good-bye, I guess,” L.D. said and waited. “I don’t know what else to say except I guess I’ll never see you again,” he said to Maxine. “I don’t plan on it, anyway. You too,” he said to Bea. “You and your crackpot ideas.”

  “Dad,” she said.

  “Why do you go out of your way to keep picking on her?” Maxine said. She took Bea’s hand. “Haven’t you done enough damage in this house already? Go on, L.D. Go and leave us in peace.”

  “It’s in your head, Dad. Just remember,” Bea said. “Where are you going, anyway? Can I write to you?” she asked.

  “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 moved the suitcase from one hand to the other and put the shaving bag under his arm. “I’ll be in touch, Bea. Honey, I’m sorry I lost my temper. Forgive me, will you? Will you forgive me?”

  “You’ve made it into a nuthouse,” Maxine said. “If it’s a nuthouse, L.D., you’ve made it so. You did it. Remember that, L.D., as you go wherever you’re going.”

  He put the suitcase down and the shaving bag on top of the suitcase. He drew himself up and faced them. Maxine and Bea moved back.

  “Don’t say anything else, Mom,” Bea said. Then she saw the toothpaste sticking out of the shaving bag. She said, “Look, Dad’s taking the toothpaste. Dad, come on, don’t take the toothpaste.”

  “He can have it,” Maxine said. “Let him have it and anything else he wants, just so long as he gets out of here.”

  L.D. put the shaving bag under his arm again and once more picked up the suitcase. “I just want to say one more thing, Maxine. Listen to me. Remember this,” he said. “I love you. I love you no matter what happens. I love you too, Bea. I love you both.” He stood there at the door and felt his lips begin to tingle as he looked at them for what, he believed, might be the last time. “Good-bye,” he said.

  “You call this love, L.D.?” Maxine said. She let go of Bea’s hand. She made a fist. Then she shook her head and jammed her hands into her coat pockets. She stared at him and then dropped her eyes to something on the floor near his shoes.

  It came to him with a shock that he would remember this night and her like this. He was terrified to think that in the years ahead she might come to resemble a woman he couldn’t place, a mute figure in a long coat, standing in the middle of a lighted room with lowered eyes.

  “Maxine!” he cried. “Maxine!”

  “Is this what love is, L.D.?” she said, fixing her eyes on him. Her eyes were terrible and deep, and he held them as long as he could.

  A Note on the Text

  Beginners: The Manuscript Version of

  What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

  Beginners is the manuscript version of the seventeen stories that were published in book form as What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Alfred A. Knopf on April 20, 1981. T
he manuscript, which Carver’s editor Gordon Lish shortened to less than half its original length in two rounds of close line-editing, is preserved in the Lilly Library of Indiana University. The editors of this volume have restored the stories to their original forms by transcribing Carver’s typewritten words that lie beneath Lish’s alterations in ink on the typescripts. For ease of comparison, and because Carver’s manuscript included no title page or table of contents, the stories in this section are arranged in the same sequence as in What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. The title, Beginners, has been provided by the editors because the story “Beginners” corresponds to the title story of What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.

  Lish was a literary mainstay during Carver’s alcoholic years of the 1970s. He published Carver’s fiction in Esquire, recommended him to editors and agents in New York City, and made possible the publication of his first collection of stories, Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?, in 1976. In the years that followed, Carver’s life changed. On June 2, 1977, he stopped drinking. In 1978, his first marriage ended in separation (divorce would follow in 1982), and in 1979 he began living with the writer Tess Gallagher. After years of temporary jobs and unemployment he was appointed senior professor of English at Syracuse University, where he began teaching in January 1980. During these same years Lish left Esquire and joined the publishing firm of Alfred A. Knopf. The two men kept in contact by letter and discussed the possibility of publishing a new collection of Carver’s fiction under Lish’s editorship at Knopf. In early May 1980 they met in New York City, where Carver gave Lish a manuscript of new and revised short stories.

  From Carver’s perspective, the manuscript he gave Lish was substantially complete. Lish had previously edited several of the stories, and the bulk of them had been published in periodicals and/or small-press brooks. Nonetheless, shortly after returning to Syracuse, Carver evidently received a query. In a letter dated May 10, 1980, he told Lish “not to worry about taking a pencil to the stories if you can make them better.” He added, “If you see ways to put more muscle in the stories, don’t hesitate to do so.” He valued his editor’s skills so highly that he offered to pay the cost of retyping if the marked-up manuscript required it.

  While Carver finished the semester in Syracuse and prepared to travel to the Pacific Northwest for the summer, Lish edited the manuscript. As he later said, what struck him in Carver’s writing was “a peculiar bleakness.” To foreground that bleakness, he cut the stories radically, reducing plot, character development, and figurative language to a minimum. Some stories were shortened by a third, several by more than a half, and two by three-quarters of their original length. The overall reduction of the manuscript in the word count was 55 percent.

  Lish worked quickly, cutting the stories to his pattern for the book. The project was on a fast track. Five weeks after receiving the manuscript, he mailed a revised and retyped version to Syracuse. It arrived just as Carver and Gallagher were departing for Alaska. After failing to reach Lish by telephone, Carver mailed him a note on June 13, 1980, and promised to call later. “The collection looks terrific, though I haven’t been able to read more than the title page—which title is fine, I think.” He enclosed payment for the typist, gave a mailing address in Fairbanks, and left without examining the edited manuscript.

  While Carver and Gallagher participated in the Midnight Sun Writers’ Conference, Lish edited the collection a second time. Once again he had the manuscript retyped. At the end of June, while Gallagher remained in Port Angeles, Carver briefly returned to Syracuse. There he awaited the second edited version of the manuscript, apparently without having read the first revision. On July 1, 1980, he wrote Lish that the “revised collection” had not yet arrived. Time was short, since he was scheduled to fly back to Washington State in ten days. To cover the second round of typing costs, he enclosed a blank check. On July 7 he received what Lish presented as the finished text of the book. When he read the edited manuscript he was shocked by the extensive changes that he found. “A Small, Good Thing,” a thirty-seven-page story, had been cut to twelve pages and renamed “The Bath.” A twenty-six-page story, “If It Please You,” had been cut to fourteen pages and renamed “Community Center.” (Lish later changed the title to “After the Denim.”) A fifteen-page story, “Where Is Everyone?” had been shortened to five pages and renamed “Mr. Coffee and Mr. Fixit.” “Beginners,” a thirty-three-page story, had been cut to nineteen pages and renamed “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.” Even “Mine,” a 500-word story previously edited by Lish and published twice, had been further condensed and renamed “Popular Mechanics.”

  After a sleepless night, early on the morning of July 8, 1980, Carver wrote an anguished letter.

  July 8, 8 a.m.

  Dearest Gordon,

  I’ve got to pull out of this one. Please hear me. I’ve been up all night thinking on this, and nothing but this, so help me. I’ve looked at it from every side, I’ve compared both versions of the edited mss—the first one is better, I truly believe, if some things are carried over from the second to the first—until my eyes are nearly to fall out of my head. You are a wonder, a genius, and there’s no doubt of that, better than any two of Max Perkins, etc. etc. And I’m not unmindful of the fact of my immense debt to you, a debt I can simply never, never repay. This whole new life I have, so many of the friends I now have, this job up here, everything, I owe to you for WILL YOU PLEASE. You’ve given me some degree of immortality already. You’ve made so many of the stories in this collection better, far better than they were before. And maybe if I were alone, by myself, and no one had ever seen these stories, maybe then, knowing that your versions are better than some of the ones I sent, maybe I could get into this and go with it. But Tess has seen all of these and gone over them closely. Donald Hall has seen many of the new ones (and discussed them at length with me and offered his services in reviewing the collection) and Richard Ford, Toby Wolff,—Geoffrey Wolff, too, some of them. This new issue of TRIQUARTERLY, out a few days ago, has a story by Toby W., one by Ford, Kittredge, McGuane, and “Where Is Everyone?” (“Mr. Fixit”). How can I explain to these fellows when I see them, as I will see them, what happened to the story in the meantime, after its book publication? Maybe if the book were not to come out for 18 months or two years, it would be different. But right now, everything is too new. Why TRIQUARTERLY has just taken another one, but that will not, cannot, come out until Fall–Winter 1981–1982. Gordon, the changes are brilliant and for the better in most cases—I look at “What We Talk About…” (“Beginners”) and I see what it is that you’ve done, what you’ve pulled out of it, and I’m awed and astonished, startled even, with your insights. But it’s too close right now, that story. Now much of this has to do with my sobriety and with my newfound (and fragile, I see) mental health and well-being. I’ll tell you the truth, my very sanity is on the line here. I don’t want to sound melodramatic here, but I’ve come back from the grave here to start writing stories once more. As I think you may know, I’d given up entirely, thrown it in and was looking forward to dying, that release. But I kept thinking, I’ll wait until after the election to kill myself, or wait until after this or that happened, usually something down the road a ways, but it was never far from my mind in those dark days, not all that long ago. Now, I’m incomparably better, I have my health back, money in the bank, the right woman for this time of my life, a decent job, blah, blah. But I haven’t written a word since I gave you the collection, waiting for your reaction means so much to me. Now, I’m afraid, mortally afraid, I feel it, that if the book were to be published as it is in its present edited form, I may never write another story, that’s how closely, God Forbid, some of those stories are to my sense of regaining my health and mental well-being. As I say, maybe if I had 18 months or two years, some distance from these pieces and a good deal more writing under my belt, I could and would go with it. Likely so. But I can’t now. I just can’t, I don’t know what else to say.<
br />
  Please help me with this, Gordon. I feel as if this is the most important decision I’ve ever been faced with, no shit. I ask for your understanding. Next to my wife, and now Tess, you have been and are the most important individual in my life, and that’s the truth. I don’t want to lose your love or regard over this, oh God no. It would be like having a part of myself die, a spiritual part. Jesus, I’m jabbering now. But if this causes you undue complication and grief and you perhaps understandably become pissed and discouraged with me, well, I’m the poorer for it, and my life will not be the same again. True. On the other hand, if the book comes out and I can’t feel the kind of pride and pleasure in it that I want, if I feel I’ve somehow too far stepped out of bounds, crossed that line a little too far, why then I can’t feel good about myself, or maybe even write again; right now I feel it’s that serious, and if I can’t feel absolutely good about it, I feel I’d be done for. I do. Lord God I just don’t know what else to say. I’m awash with confusion and paranoia. Fatigue too, that too.

  Please, Gordon, for God’s sake help me in this and try to understand. Listen. I’ll say it again, if I have any standing or reputation or credibility in the world, I owe it to you. I owe you this more-or-less pretty interesting life I have. But if I go ahead with this as it is, it will not be good for me. The book will not be, as it should, a cause for joyous celebration, but one of defense and explanation. All this is complicatedly, and maybe not so complicatedly, tied up with my feelings of worth and self-esteem since I quit drinking. I just can’t do it, I can’t take the risk as to what might happen to me. I know that the discomfort of this decision of mine is at its highest now, it’s rampant, I feel nearly wild with it. But I know it will cause you grief as well, explanations, more work, stopping everything in its tracks and coming up with valid reasons for why. But, eventually, my discomfort and yours, will go away, there’ll be a grieving, I’m grieving right now, but it will go away. But if I don’t speak now, and speak from the heart, and halt things now, I foresee a terrible time ahead for me. The demons I have to deal with every day, or night, nearly, might, I’m afraid, simply rise up and take me over.