The Steins’ misunderstanding over gifts led to a scarcity of gratitude, and the scarcity of gratitude led to a dearth of small gestures of caring, especially from Jessica to Seth. Increasingly, they were feeling out of touch. When I asked Seth what he was not getting from Jessica that he had expected, he replied in a surprising way, slipping in and out of lower-class grammar:
Nurturing. She don’t take care of me enough. But the deal was so straightforward from day one that I’m not bitter. But when I do reflect on it, that’s the thing I reflect on: I ain’t got a wife taking care of me. Every once in a while I’ll be upset about it and long for someone who might be sitting around waiting to make me comfortable when I get home. Instead, Jessica needs her back massaged just as much as I do. No, she don’t take care of my MCP needs—which I can’t help having, growing up in this kind of society. I’m just a victim of society—so I can have those needs and not feel guilty. I just can’t express them!
Why the sudden ungrammatical English? Did he mean to make a joke? To mock himself? Or perhaps he was conveying a feeling there was something wrong with him for wanting what he wanted. And was he not guilty? With a neat little acronym—MCP (male chauvinist pig)—he was summing up the accusations he felt Jessica might throw at him for insisting on his terms of appreciation, his gender ideology.
From time to time, Seth fantasized about having the “right” kind of wife—Jessica without the career motivation, but if not her, someone else. When I asked him, later in our interview, if he ever wished that Jessica didn’t work, he shot back: “Yes!” Did he feel guilty for wishing that, I asked. “No!” He wanted Jessica the person, and he felt willing and able to appreciate her enormously, on his terms.
In the meantime, each one felt unappreciated and angry: Seths acquiescence to career demands that left no emotional energy for his children angered Jessica. Jessicas withholding of nurturance angered Seth. Now they avoided each other because they were so angry. The less Seth was around, the less they would face their anger.