The Whispers

Mara has been “trying to decide how the aloneness feels” in Albert’s absence (157). Ben comes to tell her what happened to Xavier. When he leaves, she goes to the basement, where Marcus’s room is untouched. He would be 61 now. She set up this room to separate Marcus from his father. She remembers the trip to Portugal she planned when Marcus was 10 and how Albert said he’d take care of the tickets. Marcus dreamed of riding in an airplane, and Mara bought him a toy plane. It wasn’t until their suitcases were packed that Mara realized that Albert never bought the tickets. Later, Albert got drunk and said “vicious” things. In front of Marcus, Albert told Mara that she “ruined” Marcus, and Marcus never spoke another word to her again.

When Whitney pulls into her driveway after work on the afternoon before Xavier’s accident, she avoids Blair. Normally, Blair’s company is “like warm milk” (162), but sometimes she makes Whitney feel jealous. Whitney can tell that Blair wants to be close but that she also doesn’t want Whitney to see the problems in Blair’s life. Whitney senses Blair “shrink[ing]” and has felt her “hungrily consume” Whitney’s relationship with Jacob. Whitney enjoys having the upper hand in their friendship.

When Whitney goes inside, the children clamor for her attention. She yells at Xavier to take off his dirty socks, but he resists. Xavier wants to play chess before bed, but Whitney tells him no. He says he’ll play with Louisa because she’s nice to him. Trying not to cry, he tells Whitney that he knows she doesn’t like him. She moves to hug him, but he shoves her away. She yells, he runs, and she goes upstairs to her room while the twins wail for her.

Aiden tells Blair that he’s going out with friends. Aiden leaves, and Chloe says that Blair doesn’t love him anymore. Blair tells her everything is fine, but she realizes that she just encouraged her daughter to doubt her own intuition. She is inadvertently teaching Chloe that women pretend. Blair never thought she’d be like her own mother. She recalls going to her grandmother’s house with her father when she was little. They stopped on the way home while he went into a strange woman’s apartment, leaving Blair in the car. When he returned, he told Blair that her mother was a “good woman” because she put up with a “lot more than she should” (170). When they got home, Blair watched her mother stiffen at her father’s touch. Though Blair didn’t realize at the time that her father was having an affair and that her mother knew, she sees it now.

Whitney wakes up in her hospital chair. She recalls the exchange on Wednesday night and admits that Xavier was right when he said she sometimes didn’t like him. She sees Jacob’s coat on another chair and knows he is back from London. She dry heaves, and Jacob walks in. Whitney wishes he would hurt her because she wants to see how it feels. She wonders what he’s thinking about Xavier’s fall. She thinks of what Xavier wrote on his bedroom wall and “what happened right before her son fell from the window” (175). She starts heaving again.

Xavier’s doctor tells Rebecca that his brain damage might be worse than expected. Entering Xavier’s room as Jacob leaves it, she tells Whitney that she’s been pregnant five times and that she wants Whitney to know this, given her earlier question. Whitney simply says that she’s sorry without offering platitudes or advice, for which Rebecca is grateful. Jacob returns and Rebecca walks to the cafeteria with him. He says that social workers are asking questions about Xavier and the window. Jacob says that he trusts Whitney, but he worries their home might become a crime scene. Rebecca knows she must tell Ben she’s pregnant tonight.

When Rebecca gets home, she takes a shower. Ben comes in, asking if he can join her, but she’s afraid he’ll notice her belly. Rebecca updates him on Xavier’s condition. She asks him about playing catch with Xavier, and Ben explains that Xavier wanted to try out for the softball team. Blair thinks of the tiny baseball glove she bought during her first pregnancy, and though it was only three years ago, Rebecca thinks about how different she and Ben are now.

Rebecca can’t sleep, so around 3am, she gets up. She steps outside, crossing the street to the Loverlys’ property. She scans the grass where Xavier lay, thinking that maybe her new connection with Whitney drew her there.

When Rebecca goes home, Ben is awake. She shares her suspicion that Xavier’s fall wasn’t an accident. She kisses Ben’s knuckles, and he moves on top of her. They have sex, his movements sharp and “angry”; she worries that the wetness between her legs is blood and pushes him off, only to find that it’s not. She knows he was “somewhere else,” but so was she.