Lunch Counter

“I’ll need your husband’s social security number.”

“Why? I’m the one paying the bills. My name is on the account.”

“I’ll need his information in order to give you any information. Sorry, that’s the procedure.”

My hatred could fill a football stadium. I hate the woman on the phone, the bank she works for, and my husband. I’m 65. I earn half our income. I have a Ph.D. for Christ’s sake. I am not good enough to access our joint bank account? Her tone, her insistence, throws be back 40 years.

I am singed.

When I was a very young woman and first married, I always had to go to the grocery store with my husband. He was the one with the checking account. He wrote the checks. That’s how it was. Months before, I had jettisoned the name my parents had given me and taken his. I had my…