The Panty Raid by Pamela Morsi Read Free Book Online Page A

it?”
    “It’s my future.”
    “What about it?”
    “I...I have to think about it,” Dot said. “I haven’t decided about it.”
    He shrugged, unconcerned. “We’ve still got seven months before graduation. A lot of us haven’t got our plans worked out yet.”
    “It’s more than plans,” she said. “For me... well, it’s different.”
    “How so?”
    She didn’t know quite where to begin. She turned the question back to him.
    “Tell me what you want for your future, Hank?”
    He was thoughtful for a moment.
    “I’d like to get a good job,” he said. “By good, I mean something that I’d enjoy doing and that would have some purpose to it. I don’t have to make tons of money, but I want enough to get by and build up some savings for a rainy day. Someday I’d like to own a house with a yard and have a couple of kids to grow up there. I want to be healthy, live to old age and have good friends. But more than any of that, or all of it, I want the right woman to share a life. I want a wife who’s smart and funny and serious and impetuous and...well, it sounds like I want you, doesn’t it?”
    She didn’t pick up on his suggestion or comment on his declaration.
    “I guess I want what everyone wants,” he continued.
    Dot nodded. “I don’t know about everybody,” she said. “But that’s what I want, too. Unfortunately, I can’t have it.”
    “Why not?”
    “Because that’s not how the world works,” she said. “You know that a woman can’t have a career and a family.”
    Hank thought about that and nodded. “Sure she can—she must,” he said. “If she doesn’t marry, how will she afford to live? It’s hard enough for a woman to even get offered a job, let alone one that pays more than pin money. She’ll need a husband to pay the bills whether she chooses to work or not.”
    “But any chance of being taken seriously at work disappears if she has Mrs. in front of her name,” Dot countered. “Any company will treat a married woman as a temporary employee, because they know that any day she might get...in the family way. If she does, they’ll have to replace her, because you can’t have a woman who’s going to have a baby working in public. And after her baby is born, she’ll have to stay home to take care of it.”
    “Children eventually go to school,” he said.
    Dot nodded.
    “One child goes to school in just six years, but there’s no way to predict how many you’ll have,” she pointed out. “It could be two, it could be twelve. Either way, you’re not in the clear until well into your forties. And nobody hires middle-aged matrons. That’s like a comedy skit.”
    Hank could only shrug in agreement.
    “That’s what I went in to talk to Dr. Glidden about,” she explained. “I mean, initially I went there to complain about Dr. Falk and not getting appointments with job recruiters. But she made me see that Dr. Falk is not some strange, offbeat aberration that I need to get past in my classwork. He’s the norm out in the world I want to work in. His attitudes are their attitudes.”
    “He’s a creep,” Hank said adamantly.
    Dot appreciated his sentiment.
    “Dr. Glidden explained to me that a woman can’t be like a man. She can’t do whatever she wants. She can have a career or a family, but there is just no plan, no mechanism in society for her to have both.”
    There was not any way that Hank could disagree with that and he didn’t try. Instead, he asked the question that Dot had been asking herself.
    “Which do you want more? A family or a career?” Dot shook her head. “That’s the problem,” she admitted. “I want them both. I can’t seem to choose. I love kids. I always thought I’d want to be a mom. But I love science, too. And I’m the first person in my family to go to college. Can I just throw that away and say it’s not important to me? That it changes nothing?”
    “No, of course not.”
    “So, I haven’t decided what I’m going to do yet.