LOVE IS
From Lucky Duck By Chelsea Terris
Scene 8 of Lucky Duck, in which Richard discusses the love and conflict he feels in relation to his wife, who is in love with his brother. Richard enters, with his hands in his pockets.
I think about it. I think about it all the time.
Love.
I'll tell you what love is not.
Love is not the moon. Not the stars. Not fancy dinners and big shows of affection and huge teddy bears and play sets for my son at holidays.
Love is money, spent for the care of a home. Love is time. Love is up at 4am for work and home by 7pm, six days a week, twelve weeks a year.
Love is keeping a roof over the head of a mother who chatters on about the life and times of her favorite child to her lesser child. Who remembers to put tomatoes on his grilled cheese but forgets my title at work. Love is never criticizing a weak father for his silence as my brother blows his stock market green on chest waxes, while my mother grows more and more obsessed with Nick's travels, his girlfriends, his workouts. Nick, the celebrity. Nick, the success. Nick, who is never here when Mom needs someone to drive her to the store and Dad is passed out on sleeping pills. Nick, who tells my wife she should go out and get a degree but doesn't realize that his own mother drinks two martinis at every meal and isn't capable of babysitting a dog, never mind my son.
Love shouldn't hurt, but it does. Every single day. It hurts to pull back the sheets in the morning and see my wife's lips move on a breath, whispering his name. It hurts to say nothing, to squeeze my hand away from brushing her bangs from her eyes. It hurts to swallow hard on my breakfast of bitter coffee and Rolaids before meeting the cold-knuckled morning, the dark roads, commuting before the commuters with my brother's name chasing me on the exhaust from big rig trucks and the lyrics of every sad country song she programmed into the car radio.
Love is not and never was long gazes across long rooms, while I pretend not to notice. (Beat. Wipes tears.)
You see, I was a romantic. I loved her before I knew what I was doing. I didn't think she took Nick seriously. He was just a cad. What woman wants someone so undependable? I waited, I bided my time, and when he left for Paris I leapt. I took her hand in mine and she let me and I thought that was enough. For her to concede, her eyes darting to every plane that flew overhead.
It is real love, not romance, that keeps me by her still.
(Beat.) I'm not concerned that she'll leave. She won't. It's that she's never been here at all. She's been with my brother all this while, under a fantasy moon.
(Composes himself.) But that doesn't matter. Real love doesn't need acknowledgement. It isn't justifiable, quantifiable. That's something Nick never understood while he diddled numbers in his vacuum-sealed Wall Street office. You can't trade on it, or bet on it, or wager it against something else. That's an abuse, a misunderstanding, a falsity.
Does she feel it when I touch her? When our son is in bed and she has fallen asleep with a romance novel open on her belly, I touch her. I touch her hand. I touch her wrist. Her elbow. Her shoulder. Sometimes, if she hasn't swatted my fingers away, her neck. She is soft. It is what I detest in her character and love in her body. Love.
There may not be a moon, but there is a bedside lamp that she uses to read which I turn out for her when she dozes off. And if, at Christmas or a birthday, she looked away from Nick for a moment, if she glanced for a second in my direction, she would see my eyes on her. My gaze. For what it's worth. Her husband, looking at her. Seeing her.
