The Whispers

Hearing Ben downstairs watching baseball, Rebecca goes to an online pregnancy forum on her tablet. She doesn’t let herself “consum[e] [all] the details” of this stage of pregnancy (111), but she takes a few minutes to enjoy having made it this far. She goes downstairs to sit with Ben before returning to the hospital, recalling what he told her several months ago: that he wanted to stop trying for a baby because it was destroying them. Rebecca hated Ben in that moment because of what her longing has done to her; she also feared that he would view her as the impediment to having children and leave her. A few weeks later, she felt herself ovulate and seduced Ben, promising him she was not ovulating. She will have to tell him about the lies soon, but she fears another loss will kill him.

Rebecca asks Blair to come to the hospital to support Whitney. Blair tries to control her feelings, something she struggles with: She worries all the time about things happening to Chloe, though Whitney chastises her, as though Blair’s concern is a “fault.” Blair’s suspicions of Aiden and Whitney make it all the harder to compose herself, but she resolves to try for Whitney’s sake. She recalls going to Whitney’s to collect Chloe a few weeks ago; she noticed Xavier’s open window and the children jumping on the bed under it. Blair feared what could happen, but Whitney was unconcerned. She knows she cannot ask Whitney about the key now, but Blair considers it “fair game” to wonder how Xavier could have fallen from a window in the middle of the night.

Whitney is not happy to hear that Blair is on her way. She recalls how they met, shortly after Whitney had the twins. When she learned she was having twins, Whitney’s initial panic gave way to relief: Her distraction after their births could be attributed to having two babies, an excuse she didn’t have with Xavier. After their birth, Jacob got the flu, the twins were screaming, and Whitney was in pain. When she took them outside, Blair and Chloe came over. Blair knew right away that the twins had thrush and offered to watch them while Whitney rested. When Whitney woke up four hours later, she felt embarrassed about leaving Blair with the babies for so long. She thought Blair was “simple and wholesome” and wanted to be more like her (124).

Blair arrives at the hospital. When Rebecca greets her, Blair mentions Xavier’s “accident” and wonders if that’s the word everyone is using. Rebecca asks Blair if Whitney has been okay recently, and Blair says she can’t think of anything unusual. Blair thinks that knowing the daily habits of Whitney’s life makes their friendship “so special—this familiarity of the mundane, the comfort of being witness to each other’s interior lives” (127). This makes the affair much worse to Blair.

Walking through the hospital with Rebecca, Blair recalls the last time Xavier came over and his surprise when Blair said she liked him being there. He obviously expected her to feel the opposite, and she wondered how he felt about himself at home. Blair now expresses sympathy for Ben since he and Xavier have grown close, playing catch for hours each day. Rebecca was unaware of this.

Blair is shocked by Whitney’s “hollow” appearance. However, Whitney won’t let Blair touch her and tells Blair, “I can’t have you here” (130). Whitney won’t even look at her. Blair, stunned at this rejection of their friendship, leaves the room. Rebecca calls after her, and Blair pretends she cannot hear.

On the day of Xavier’s fall, Xavier’s teacher calls Whitney with concerns about Xavier, who is teased at school and is growing quiet and withdrawn. Whitney interprets this concern as criticism of her mothering, and she fights to keep control of her feelings. The thought of someone making Xavier feel inadequate upsets her. She thinks of how Jacob makes her feel when she “loses patience” with the children: “Like he doesn’t think she can be trusted” (133). To Whitney, his regret about going to London likewise suggests his reservations about her parenting.

Mara sees Ben talking to Blair, and she knows something is going on. She thinks about how, for years, she was a “referee” between Albert and Marcus, struggling to protect her son from her husband’s anger. At night, she would sneak outside to acknowledge the truth she never voiced: that she resented “having a son who needed her in the way that [Marcus] did” (135). It was hard to be the kind of mother Marcus required, and she felt she was growing smaller with the effort. She stopped looking into Albert’s eyes in an effort to maintain control of her feelings and never allowed herself to cry.

Now Mara goes to the kitchen and finds Albert is on the floor. He is alive but doesn’t seem to know her. She calls paramedics, but Albert dies before they arrive. The paramedics talk quietly to each other and ask Mara if she has any family that can come over. She doesn’t, and she worries they can sense her loneliness. They offer to take Albert’s body to the hospital rather than waiting for the medical examiner, and she agrees. She thinks the loss of Albert is “unremarkable” compared to the day she lost her son.

Rebecca watches Whitney, wondering why Blair left. Leo, a nurse and friend, asks Rebecca if she thinks Xavier jumped, and she says she thinks it was an accident. She thinks of her pregnancy two years ago; Leo was the first to know of it and protected her from questions when she miscarried. Rebecca never told anyone about the other pregnancies, which ended in fewer than three months and were therefore “not enough to justify everyone around her being uncomfortable” (140). She thinks about how parents lie to protect themselves and wonders whether Whitney might be lying for the same reason.

Aiden arrives home, and Blair knows she must set aside her anger while Chloe is present. She feels like an expert at hiding her real feelings behind the motions of motherhood. Blair thinks that Aiden is good at the “easy” parts of parenthood. She considers what it would be like if they divorced: the deadbolt lock she’d put on her door and the “crushing repetition of chronic loneliness, the deafening silence” (144). While Aiden is distracted, Blair unlocks his phone, looking for evidence of the affair. She does this often, and though she doesn’t feel good about it, she can’t stop. Blair wonders if Chloe can sense the crumbling foundation of their marriage.

Rebecca rests in an on-call room. She recalls each of her miscarriages. The first fetus was the size of a pomegranate, and she vividly remembers the feeling of the “bulge” passing through her body. The second fell into the toilet after hours of cramps, and Rebecca buried it in the backyard. She miscarried for the third time at work, slipping it into a medical waste bin. The fourth time, the fetus had to be cut out of her at the hospital. Rebecca considers the nature of miscarriage: It is not a discrete “event” but rather goes “on and on” (148).