Eventually Jessica accepted Seths long hours and more wholeheartedly colluded in the idea that he was the helpless captive of his profession and his neurotic personality. This was her cover story. But as she did this, she made another emotional move— away from the marriage and family. She did not bolt from motherhood into a workaholism of her own, as some women I interviewed did. But neither did she embrace motherhood. Instead, she wore it lightly. She bought new educational games for Walter and she helped Victor with his piano lessons. But there was a certain mildness in her manner, an absence of talk about the children, an animation when she spoke of times she was away from them that suggested this “solution” of halfheartedness.
If Seth s unconscious move was to remove himself in body and spirit from his children, Jessicas move was to be there in body, but not much in spirit. She would accommodate his strategy on the surface but limit her emotional offerings underneath—give some nurturance to the children, little to Seth, and save the rest for herself, her “separate life.”