He couldn’t stand her smoking and she was constantly giving it up. He once dumped her last packs into the trash can outside when she asked him to and she ran out a few hours later to retrieve them and smoke from one. She smoked before she went to bed, sometimes in bed while he was reading, first thing when she woke up, in restaurants over their food, in the car with the windows up, on their walks and the one camping trip they all took, spoiling the fresh air, on the beach when she’d ask him to help her light one because of the wind. He told her that his mother, when he was a boy, always seemed surrounded by cigarette smoke. “Two packs a day, sometimes three, and these extra long ones — Pall Malls; the smell in the house was execrable; even my father, who smoked a lousy cigar at night, complained of it and her breath, though his smoke I didn’t seem to mind that much and for some reason quickly dissipated. To kiss her I felt I had to wave a wall of smoke away just to see her face. She kidded me about it but I hated the stench and I don’t know how many times I got burned by her or one of her cigarettes left around. It kept me — I’m sure of this — from getting closer to her even emotionally and I didn’t even want to use a towel she’d used, because of the cigarette smell on it, or get too near the clothes she had on.” She laughed and said “So it at least stopped you from having a too-comfortable relationship with her and becoming a mama’s boy or from even marrying your mother — a good thing, I’d think,” and he said “The truth is — and of course what you say about my mother and me is absurd — that I could never marry a woman who smokes,” and she said “Why in hell would you ever think I’d marry you, if you were referring to me?” “So I should cross that possibility off my list, is that it? But if it doesn’t remain one then I don’t see how I can hang around here that much longer. I eventually want to get married to someone, have my own kid, maybe a second,” and she said “Yes, for certain, cross it off with me. I’ve had my child. To me one’s more than enough, to have and to handle. I want to do things, not just bring up babies. You want to have one, two, as many as you want — many bedrooms filled with them; I don’t want many bedrooms; two’s fine and a third for guests — do it with someone else or several women. You could still live here while you’re off inseminating, I wouldn’t mind, unless you took one of these reproducers too seriously and I wasn’t getting my time’s worth from you and began to look like a fool. And when the baby’s reached a certain age, long past being toilet trained in both departments and a good clean eater. What I’m saying is no big messes on the floor and in its pants and broken bowls. When it gets into kindergarten or first grade, really, so is out of the house a minimum of six hours a weekday, it can come live with us, if its mother doesn’t mind, and permanently if she wants to give it up to its dad. I think I’d like a second child that way, and by that time, but only with your assistance and financial support, and because Brons should pretty well be on his own by then, there wouldn’t be that much work to do for it, so it’d be something I could manage while doing all my other things,” and he said “But your smoking, and I’m being serious here — you don’t think you could do something about it? At least cut it way down and try to keep it out of my food and hair and the room we sleep in?” and she said “Giving it up entirely or cutting back on it is something I’d only do for myself. And after all my starts at it and quick stops, it’s obvious I’m not ready yet. I suppose I can keep it out of the bedroom and blow it away from your plate, but that’s probably as far as I can control it for now.”
