By Mary Alice Gallagher Kaufman*, November 1, 2017 — Damn cigarettes. He’s been home (from the navy, 1946) just three days and already the house stinks of cigarette smoke. Never thought I’d have this problem. I threw the hated pack of cigarettes back on the kitchen table, paused a moment, then picked them up again. A cunning grin replaced the puzzled, what-do-I-do-now, irate frown.
As a teenage[r], I had watched too many movies over the years not to have acquired a taste for the theatrical. Without hesitation, I expertly shook out a single cigarette from its nesting place, struck a match against the friction strip on the side cover of the box and held the flame to the cigarette. I inhaled just enough to watch with pleasure the glow of lit tobacco. I was ready to put to the test all the acting ability I had acquired while beguiled and bewitched by such movie stars as Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, actresses who knew how to handle a cigarette.
Carl, loving husband and devoted father, sat on the couch in the living room, one hand steadying our small daughter on his knees, a cigarette clasped between two fingers of his other hand. He ignored the curling stream of smoke brushing past Bonnie’s face before rising to the ceiling.
Carefully positioning myself against the door jamb between the kitchen and living room, I put the lit cigarette to my lips and pulled in a mouthful of smoke, then deliberately pursed my lips and blew. Eyeball to eyeball I met Carl’s glare, removed the cigarette and with forced calm, gently murmured, “Carl, you didn’t smoke when I met you, you didn’t smoke when I married you. If you are going to smoke now, I am going to smoke.”
From that moment on, my resigned husband remained a non-smoker until the day he died.
[Julie-Ann Young’s Grandmother]