“You’re not easy to live with. Whenever I pluck my eyebrows or wax my legs, you stare as though you’ve found a spider in your salad, but if I point out that your socks smell, you start moaning that I’ve stopped loving you. Every evening you grumble, whose turn is it to take the trash out and who washed the dishes yesterday, and whether there were more dirty dishes yesterday or today. And then you ask why it is that the only thing we ever talk about in this house is the washing up and the trash. I know, Effy, that these are petty things. We could work on them. We could give up, or get used to them. You don’t unpick a family on account of smelly socks. I don’t even get worked up anymore over your regular wisecracks about aerodynamics and jet engines, which so far as you’re concerned have to do only with war and killing. As though your wife works for a syndicate of murderers. I’ve managed to get used to your poor jokes. And your grumbling all day long. And your dirty handkerchiefs on the dinner table. And your leaving the door of the refrigerator open. And your endless theories about who really killed President Kennedy and why. You’ve developed verbal diarrhea, Effy. You’ve even taken to arguing with the radio, correcting the newscasters’ grammar.