The Whispers

Aiden apologizes to Blair for being so late, saying he didn’t see her texts, and she thinks of how easy it is for him to lie. She goes downstairs to search his pockets for a bar receipt; there is none. She checks his phone and sees that he has deleted her messages, something he never does. She shows him the key she discovered at Whitney’s house, and he says something about having lost it and asks where she found it. She asks him directly if he’s having an affair.

Rebecca tells Ben she’s pregnant. He is upset, feeling they cannot “survive” another loss. She has hope because this is her longest pregnancy to date: “She wants to know what it feels like to be fanatically consumed” by the details of a child (201). When Ben doesn’t respond, she goes upstairs to lie on the nursery floor. 

Aiden refuses to answer Blair. She walks away crying. When Chloe asks why she’s upset, Blair remembers the pain of seeing her own mother as “small.” Chloe asks again and Blair lies, feigning happiness.

Aiden walks into the kitchen, while Blair is there with Chloe. Chloe asks about what happened to Xavier and, learning of his fall, wants to get him a card, so Blair says they can stop on the way to school. Aiden behaves with an “ease” that is off-putting to Blair after what they just discussed. She remembers the night he asked her to move in with him, after which she stopped envying friends who were already married with children. She was determined to be a different kind of wife from her mother. Yet Blair recalls catching Aiden looking at another woman, and she understood then that she would have to accept and ignore things about him that she doesn’t like.

En route to the drugstore, Blair asks if Chloe has ever seen Whitney get really angry at Xavier, and Chloe says she doesn’t know. Blair realizes Chloe is lying, “doing what she thinks a good girl should do” (211). Chloe looks at cards while Blair compares the foil corner she found in Aiden’s pocket to condom packages. Chloe breaks down, saying that Xavier isn’t her best friend anymore. She confesses that she was mean to him on Wednesday: She made him cry and everyone made fun of him. Chloe wanted to apologize, but the next day he wasn’t home to walk to school with her. She asks Blair to take the card and toy airplane to him and to tell him she’s sorry she said that no one would care if he died.

Jacob holds Whitney’s phone out, telling her she’s got three messages from her assistant and asking if he should call her work to explain. Whitney grabs the phone, knowing the texts are from the man with whom she’s having an affair, purposefully mislabeled as her assistant. The man reports that an unspecified woman, presumably his wife, “is close to finding out” (214).

Rebecca decides to go see her mother to tell her the good news. She considers all of the sacrifices her mother made for her and hopes she can repay her with a grandchild. On the way, she starts to bleed.

Whitney remembers going to Xavier’s room Wednesday night and seeing that he had written something on his wall. She was furious. Now she thinks of her lies and how Jacob will leave her. She hears the doctors talk about the pressure in Xavier’s skull and feels that “[s]he has ruined him” (220). She pinches his breathing tube.

Rebecca speeds home, still bleeding. When she pulls in, Mara approaches the car, offering help; Mara guesses what’s happening. Rebecca tells Mara she can go because Rebecca has been through this before and then goes upstairs to her bathroom to wait for the contractions.

Whitney feels relieved as she cuts off Xavier’s oxygen, but when a nurse walks in, Whitney releases the breathing tube. The nurse assures her that all is well, and then Jacob clears his throat. Whitney doesn’t know when he came in or if he saw what she did. He tells her to go home and rest, but she refuses. She thinks about how she could lose everything and crawls into Xavier’s bed. She imagines being attentive and loving while he teaches her how to play chess. Then she remembers a moment when he was five months old; this was when she realized that she would “always want for more” (227). She falls asleep, and while she holds him, Xavier tries to open his eyes.

Whitney hungers for the moment a man “enter[s]” her. She loves feeling as though men have surrendered to her because it makes her feel like a “predator.” On the last night of a business trip to Paris, Whitney invites a man to bed with her, as she often does. Once he leaves, she brushes her teeth and uses mouthwash, feeling that she has disposed of him: “Gone, it’s all gone, she can let herself believe it’s that easy” (229). However, the next morning, Jacob arrives unexpectedly. He finds a suggestive note the man left, and Whitney lies, saying how much fun the previous guest must have had. While she showers, Jacob puts the note on her nightstand, as if to say, “Convince me that I’m wrong” (231). She understands his intent but feigns ignorance and throws the note away.

A nurse comes to bathe Xavier, asking Whitney to help. Whitney, however, is “elsewhere,” thinking of her lover and how he says whatever she tells him to. She thinks of all the tickets she has given to Jacob to get him out of town and how he has praised her as the best wife. Meanwhile, she has sex with the other man in the shed. She thinks of this man while having sex with Jacob. At the same time, she loves Jacob to the point that she cannot stand having let him and their family down. She reasons that none of her affairs have been about Jacob; rather, “she needs to feel outside of him, apart from them all” (234). These men are not Jacob, who is better than her and whom she fails repeatedly. This need is a habit that she no longer even tries to resist. As a nurse brings Whitney a cup of water, Whitney decides to “surrender.”