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Love Medicine

Summary: Love Medicine

Narrated by Lipsha Morrissey in 1982, this story describes the marriage of Marie and Nector Kashpaw. Marie and Nector rescued Lipsha from his own mother when he was a child and raised him as their own, so he feels gratitude and obligation to them. Lipsha has “the touch,” which means he can heal some physical ailments with his hands. However, he cannot heal Nector’s dementia which Nector calls his “second childhood.” Lipsha tells how Nector was and is still unfaithful to his wife with Lulu Lamartine. All three live in the same Senior Citizens home now. 

Lipsha tells of the time when he went to Mass with Nector who started yelling the prayers loudly so that God could hear them. This memory leads to Lipsha’s musings about the Christian God and the Chippewa gods. Lipsha also recalls a time when he walked into the laundry room at the Senior Citizens home and found Nector and Lulu having sex. The incident ends abruptly when Lulu’s wig falls off, revealing her bald head. During the encounter, Nector confesses that his letter started the fire that burned Lulu’s house down, but Lulu does not understand what he means.

Lipsha decides to help Marie by getting some love medicine for her and Nector, a magic food that would help Nector stay faithful. Lipsha sees some geese flying and decides goose hearts would do the job. After waiting a long time in a slough, Lipsha takes a shot at two geese but misses. He decides to take a shortcut by buying frozen turkeys at the Red Owl and using their hearts instead. Lipsha takes the hearts to Sister Mary Martin to be blessed, but when she hears he wants to use them for love medicine, she tells him to simply be himself. So, Lipsha blesses the hearts himself with holy water. 

When Marie feeds the turkey heart to Nector, he chokes. She runs for help as Lipsha tries to save him, but Lipsha witnesses Nector’s life sinking under a lake like a bobber, remembering fishing with this man who raised him. When Marie returns and sees Nector dead, she collapses, and then Lipsha himself loses consciousness. When he wakes, Marie is receiving life-saving oxygen, something she later resents. Family and friends come from all over to attend Nector’s funeral. Lipsha sits with Albertine who is studying to be a doctor.

A week after the funeral, Lipsha visits Marie and finds her staring at Nector’s empty chair. She tells Lipsha that Nector “ain’t gone yet,” so Lipsha stays with her that night. They agree that they should not have tampered with love medicine. At dawn, Marie screams and says that Nector had climbed into bed with her. Lipsha feels his presence and pushes it back to where it belongs, instructing it to look for Aunt June for comfort. Lipsha sleeps until noon the next day and wakes knowing what he wants to tell Marie. He tells her about the turkey hearts and that Nector loves her still. She tells Lipsha that he’s her favorite and gives him her rosary beads, which touch his heart. He cries. He goes out to dig dandelions and sees the sacred plants as full of an indestructible life. 

Analysis: Love Medicine

This story is full of magic. Early in the story, Lipsha describes how he was born with “the touch,” or the ability to ease sickness or ailments with the touch of his hands. Marie has visions such as the one that saved Gordie’s life. A man named Wristwatch wore his father’s watch even though it no longer ran. After the man died, the watch began to tick. A bird disappears in Lulu’s clothes, never to be found. The love medicine of the title is magic and mysterious. Such magic needs the blessing of a priest or nun to make it work. Both Marie and Lipsha “see” Nector after he dies. Lipsha is like a priest who administers magic and understands deep mystical truths about life and love.

This chapter deals explicitly with religion, both Catholicism and Chippewa faith. Lipsha makes a trip to the convent and Marie prays with a rosary. Nector and Lipsha attend Mass. The problem that Lipsha faces stems from his belief in the connection between magic and faith. He believes that the real power of the goose hearts was not the object itself, but in people’s faith that they can cure.  Love medicine is a placebo that works simply because the receiver believes in its power. “Love Medicine” is the most philosophical of all the stories so far, mostly the musings of a man who feels and thinks deeply and who appreciates the family who adopted him. Lipsha’s voice, his observations, and thoughts seem to pull the entire novel together as it begins its crescendo.

Connections with other stories abound. Marie prevented Gordie from going with Henry Junior and Lyman in “The Red Convertible.” The geese recall the two dead birds in “The Wild Geese.” Sister Mary Martin from “The Crown of Thorns” is the one who gives Lipsha love advice and will not bless the package he carries. Marie’s rosary reflects the one in “The Beads.” Albertine Johnson appears at Nector’s funeral. It’s as if Erdrich is nearing the end of a piece of knitting, picking up threads from the stories before.

Literally and figuratively, the story’s heart is love in its truest, deepest, most universal form. Lipsha, an uneducated yet highly intelligent man, grows to understand love although he ironically never finds a partner to love. His language is often lyrical and poetic. As Lipsha comforts Marie in her grieving, he speaks some of the novel’s most profound words: “Love medicine ain’t what brings him back to you, Grandma. . . . He loved you over time and distance, but he went off so quick he never got the chance to tell you how he loves you, how he doesn’t blame you, how he understands. It’s true feeling, not no magic.” Marie closing her hand over Lipsha’s and giving him her rosary is one of the most meaningful gestures in the novel.

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