Summer Soap, Part 2: The pair debated the topic- What IS love?

Sir Pat:

“Yes, love. Have you ever been in love?” Alexis asked.

She was odd. Had forgotten to give her name at first. Only realised when she remembered she didn’t know my own. Had just strolled up to me while the morning air was still cold, a smile wrinkling the corner of her eyes as though we were old friends who hadn’t seen each other in some time. Her eyes were nearly as dark as the rest of her clothing.

Sorry, she had said. I was just walking by and saw you here. It was the third time, actually. In any case, could I buy you a pint? I’d like to pick your brain for a bit and start my day with some wisdom. I’m trying to do some interviews for a research paper of mine.

What was I supposed to say? I had spent enough hours in the silence of my favourite booth here. I could afford one day of change.

“Once, I think,” I answered.

“You think?”

“I think.” As I spoke, Alexis’s eyes met my gaze. “I was married twice. Divorced both times.” I watched her middle finger absently trace a circular groove in the table. “But my entire life, it always felt like each new relationship was more true, ya know? Truer than the previous at least.”

The new bartender reappeared from the back room, hair now barely combed. At least it was better than when he had first entered, head stained on one side from the rain, cowlicked on the other. He had traded places with the first bartender, before bouncing like a rabbit around us while we talked.

“When I was with my first wife,” I continued, “I thought I loved her. When I was with my second wife, I thought I loved her.”

I paused and shrugged. Alexis took a sip of her Murphy’s in the space. I had tried to make her crack earlier, tried to make her go back and forth with me. But now that she had explained her weird kettle-analogy, I didn’t mind the silence: I could say as I liked, and take my time too.

“Now I’m with neither,” I said, raising my own glass to match. “And I just feel like a man who thought he loved.”

Alexis waited a moment, making sure I didn’t have anything else to say. “And how do you feel about that?” She sat forward in her seat as she spoke. Eager. “I get what you mean, but, does it bother you... not being... confident? That’s not the right word but...”

“I’m with you.” A long sigh escaped me, and I took another sip. Already on my third beer and it had barely passed noon. “No, I wouldn’t say so. You asked me what love is before, and I still can’t tell you that, but I will say where it’s from: Love’s always been in the pursuit.

“You become attracted to someone,” I continued, “interested in them. Because of something that catches your eye, something they do that catches your ear or your mind. But you become in love with someone because of how you respond to that attraction. How you respond, not them.”

A smile tickled Alexis’s lips which Alexis tried, unsuccessfully, to hide behind the foam of the Murphy’s.

“You have to put your best self forward, ya know?” I said. “Really sell yourself. My first wife said I looked like a toad on the day we met: bad haircut, wearing a too-tight turtleneck, bulging eyes. It happens, ya know? But, I had to earn it. Had to earn us.

“Flowers, letters, dinner, dinner, dinner. The works.” I laughed quietly at the memory before tucking it back. “And don’t even get me started on befriending her four older brothers! It was work. Hard work.” I watched Alexis’s nails tick against her glass as I spoke. “Tell me, you have any little ones?”

She snorted, nearly spitting out the Murphy’s she had just started sipping. When she had recovered, Alexis shook her head. “Not my own at least, although some days, with friends like mine, it feels like I do. And sometimes I do the odd babysitting, I guess, helping out friends and family here and there.”

“Bah.” I waved her away. “No, no, you wouldn’t get it then. You see, when my two sons were small, my first wife had tried to scold them and stop them. Tried to wrap them and the entire house with bubble wrap so as to dull the edge of the entire world. Then came my second wife. She wanted to spoil them, wanted to be liked and loved. So, she let them do as they pleased. And they, as kids do, got burnt, cut, bruised, dropped, and so on and so forth. But, the next day, I would be watching over them, and what do you know? They stopped stretching to roll off the couch, didn’t flick at all the fire ants, ya know?”

I took another sip of my beer, letting it spread across my palate, before rolling my lips like hands rubbing together, catching the last remnants of foam. The woman waited tentatively as I worked the next words through my mind.

“So, pursuit,” I finally said. “Love is found in those acts of learning. Of improvement. When I met my first wife, I was a man who didn’t know how to dress and had bad handwriting. By the time we were married, I was a man who loved writing letters and watching football with her brothers. By the time I became engaged to my second wife, she never knew the first man. No shame in it. No ill-will. I was made better, ya know? Raised by it. I guess that’s what love is, if I had to give a temporary answer. That thing that grows alongside you, grows old with you. That thing that shapes you into something better, as long as you put in the effort every day.”