Andrew Neiderman: Deficiency

"I've always felt comfortable there, Mom. I just would like it for a while."

"Let her do what she wants," her father said. "She's earned the right."

"But what about Curt?" her mother pursued. Terri knew her mother had been quietly investigating all sorts of wedding preparations, anticipating that she would get the position and would practice medicine here. Terri was not surprised. After all, as soon as Terri had decided to return to the area to practice medicine, whether she worked with Hyman Templeman or not, she and Curt had become formally engaged.

"It will be a while yet, Mom."

"But..."

"Doris!" her father cried holding up his arms like someone pleading with the Almighty.

"Okay, okay. I'm just asking. A mother can ask her daughter questions, can't she?" she said and turned to her again, this time like a prosecutor who had overcome a defense attorney's objection. "Why wait now?" Her mother held her breath in anticipation of some dreadful news.

"I have to have my own space for a while," she told her. "It's important I feel independent."

"You've got your career; you're going to be married. Why do you have to feel any more independent?" her mother persisted.

Curt had wanted to know the same thing.

"Why can't we get married immediately? Why do we have to wait for you to feel secure in your profession? What does that have to do with our marriage?" She explained as best she could that without a strong self-image, she wouldn't be able to give him all he deserved.

"Let me clean up my act first," she begged. "I'd like to be standing on my own two feet."

She knew it was difficult for him to understand. It wasn't something his mother would have ever said to his father, and despite his protest that he was just as much a modern thinking man as anyone else, he carried a great deal of oldfashioned baggage, even some he wasn't aware himself he was carrying, as his attitude about doctors had revealed.

But it wasn't all bad. She admitted to herself that she liked, even craved some of those old-fashioned values, especially Curt's reverence for the sanctity of marriage and the home. In this way Curt was more like his grandparents. Of all the grandchildren, he had been the closest to them. As a child he had worked on his grandfather's farm and absorbed his rural-flavored wisdom. He had been with both his paternal grandfather and grandmother when they died, and to this day, he missed them dearly. She liked that about him. It was one of the qualities that endeared her to him and overcame what she saw as some faults. Terri knew that Curt sincerely believed that a man and a woman became one when they took the vows, each and every word of which he accepted and held sacred. He cherished the image of family, wanted children and a solid home life. And so, he was caught in a conflict she recognized and handled as delicately as she could. He told her he was proud of her, proud of what she had accomplished, and proud of the idea that he would be married to a doctor, but at the same time, she sensed he was afraid she would be one of these professional women willing to sacrifice the children and their needs when it came to being her own person.

"Not that I want to be like my father," he quickly emphasized. "And expect you to do everything and make all the career sacrifices like he expected of my mother. I want to be there for my kids all the time. I'm not paying any chauffeur to cart them around to their school activities and Little League. We're all going to grow up together," he promised. "Can you make the same promise?" he taunted.

"I don't know, Curt," she confessed. "I'm going to try. I want the same things you want. I'm going to try, but at the moment, I don't know." It was a more honest answer than Curt had wanted, and a little sour note resonated in the hall of their otherwise happy symphony.

Terri tried to be understanding. She believed that in many ways the modern world tested the bonds of love more than they had been tested in times when people had to struggle every day merely to survive. She had an undying faith that the love between her and Curt would overcome any and all obstacles. Was she being naive or perhaps as Hyman Templeman might say, "a little too doctor arrogant"?

Occasionally, she muttered a tiny prayer: "Oh please, please, don't let that be so."

Impulsively, she made a sharp right turn onto State Highway 17 and sped up, instead of taking County Road One down toward Centerville and to what had been her grandmother's home. She was going to Bridgeville because that was where Curt lived, in a home once owned by his grandfather. It was another wonderful thing they shared, she thought, both currently residing in their grandparents' old homes.

She glanced at the clock in the car. It was ridiculously early to pay a visit, but she relished the idea of getting him up to answer the door and then going back to his bedroom and crawling under the covers with him.

She wanted to make love very badly; she wanted to be vibrant and sensuous and feel sexual ecstasy. She wanted to feel alive. That was it. There was no other way to get Paige's degenerating body out of her mind and to forget the glassy eyes of the dead.

Curt could barely open his eyes, and when he did, he had to squint because the old farm house faced the east and the rising sun peered over the horizon unobstructed. The house had been built on a knoll facing the long, flat fields that had once hosted acres of corn, a sea of it he used to think. Now it was all overgrown, the pale brown weeds swaying in the autumn breeze. But there were a number of beautiful large maple and hickory trees around the house, and the house had a wide and deep back yard that looked upon the mountains and woods. On the rear patio, one could feel isolated, peaceful, relaxed. Curt wanted to put in a pool, but he didn't want to go forward with any of the changes or restorations in the old house until he and Terri were married so she could be party to each and every decision. Actually, he hated the thought of changing anything in the old house, the house his grandfather had built himself. Curt's grandfather had been a small farmer, raising dairy cows and chickens and the corn crop that once had glittered like gold out there. He and his hardworking wife, Nanny Lillian, had raised four boys and a girl. Two of the boys, Uncle Frank and Uncle Abe, now worked on Wall Street. Uncle Louie had become a merchant marine and was presently still a captain on an oil tanker. Aunt Charlotte married a banker and moved to Pennsylvania.

There was never enough money when Curt's father, uncles, and aunt were growing up. His father had to take on odd jobs and when he was old enough, work in the Catskill resorts as a busboy and finally as a waiter to earn his college tuition. But he never gave up and when he did get into law school, he graduated at the top of his class. Only after he had landed a good job with a New York City law firm did he marry Curt's mother, Marion Steele. Shortly afterward, when the opportunity presented itself, he went into his own practice, developed real estate deals in the Catskills and became one of the most respected and successful attorneys here.

There wasn't time in those days to worry about whether or not he was stepping on his wife Marion's own career goals, he once told Curt whenever they discussed Curt and Terri's long engagement. "Your mother knew that from the start. She once had some ambition to become a magazine editor and work in New York City, but she never really pursued it. Oh, she tried some freelance writing, but that didn't lead anywhere, and soon she was happy just being Mrs. William Levitt. I never heard her complain about the decisions she made. Of course, that was before all this women's liberation business, before women began to wonder why they couldn't have flies on their pants, too," he joked, half joked, actually. Curt knew his father was too much of a male chauvinist. However, Curt's father loved and respected Terri, even though he teased her whenever he had an opportunity to do so. Curt was also aware that his father was a flirt and suspected that he might have had an extramarital affair here and there, but Curt would rather not think about it. He was like that when it came to his father -- deliberately blind to any of his faults or willing to easily excuse and rationalize them away.