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Should Women Be Allowed to Work?
[10.4.03]
His cellphone rang. He reached over from his bed to answer.
"Hey Dad. No. I'm still in my room. I'm feeling a bit sick - sore throat and coughs. Sorry."
His dad told him to stay and get some rest.
"Hmm... I had some slides I needed you to drop off. But okay, bye."
He looked at the clock at it read 2pm.
Shit. Mad late, he thought. He mulled in his bed for a few minutes and realized that his dad would have a tough time alone at the store. Before long, the guilt had him feeling uncomfortable. He rose, dressed, and headed for the subway.
"You didn't have to come. I told you to get some rest," his dad told him as he entered the store. But there was an apparent smile forming at the lips on his dad's face.
"Yeah, I guess I wasn't that sick. Here, let me go drop off those slides."
His family owned a photo store in East Village. Although they had their own slide machine, they never quite got it to work and found it more convenient to have slides processed at another photo store nearby. It was a brisk Saturday in October and he decided to walk over to the other store rather than take the bike. It was about four blocks from Cooper Square to Waverly Place, and he always found the walk interesting, especially on Astor's Place, where he got a whiff of the incense burning on the sidewalk and took in the sound provided by the latest musician to camp out on the corner with an open box begging for change.
"Here's forty dollars. I know it's little, but try to eat well," his dad said.
"Aw man, you don't have to pay me. We barely get customers nowadays," he said, as he took the two crisp bills from his dad's hand. He tried to calculate in his mind to see if he had actually worked enough to deserve the money, especially after his dad had bought him a $10 lunch and a cup of Starbucks coffee. He told himself that the cashier duty, developing seven rolls, and dropping off the slides all in four hours' time had to be worth about ten dollars an hour. He felt better about taking the money and smiled back at his dad. "Thanks."
Back in his room at school, he sat in his chair and flipped through the latest New York Times Magazine. He got his magazine from the unclaimed stack of Times papers at his dormitory entrance. He sometimes wondered if the subscriber called the company to ask why the magazine was always missing. This week's focus was on New York and the "Neo-70s." He found the articles too artsy and just browsed quickly through the pictures. On the last page, he read about some woman who had memberships to two gyms - a crowded chain gym and an upscale local gym - and how she used the crowded one for its "toning-and-step" class and the upscale one for everything else. He leaned back in his chair and wondered if he would ever drop $140 a month for a gym membership. Maybe, he thought.
He then picked up his book, The Unfinished Journey, and continued to read about the failure of social reform after World War II in America. Damn, I haven't seen her in three weeks, he thought, as he read about the great postwar debate on whether or not employed women should go back to being housewives as the men returned from war.
He reached for the Robitussin and hoped his cough and sore throat would go away.
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