The Whispers

Aiden is Blair’s husband, and he has had a roving eye since the night he asked Blair to move in with him. Blair suspects he’s having an affair with Whitney, her best friend, but she is wrong. He is sleeping with someone else. In that respect, he is a red herring, deflecting the reader’s attention from Ben—the person Whitney is really having the affair with—to make the revelation of Ben’s involvement with Whitney more shocking.

Aiden is easygoing and allows Blair to blame him for her feelings. He doesn’t appreciate all she does to keep their household running smoothly, but he is a loving father. Their daughter, Chloe, sees the problems in the relationship (though not the infidelity specifically); in this, she mirrors Blair, who experienced her own parents’ troubled marriage similarly. Thus, Aiden’s behavior, lies, and disrespect of Blair are just as responsible as Blair’s willful ignorance for tacitly teaching their daughter what society expects of “good women.”

Whitney is another of the novel’s point-of-view characters, second only to Blair in centrality. She is also Blair’s best friend, foil, and, in some ways, her rival. Whitney resents motherhood because it is not enough for her—a fact that leads her to simultaneously admire and resent Blair, for whom mothering seems easy. In part to cope with these feelings, Whitney also criticizes Blair’s priorities, describing motherhood as a kind of “voluntary death” of a woman’s identity. When Whitney learned she was having twins, she was relieved to have an excuse for the distraction she would inevitably feel; she thinks that having two babies will explain—in a socially acceptable way—why she isn’t devoted to either one.

As this episode suggests, Whitney is highly concerned with how she and her family appear to others. This focus on appearances could explain her last name, too, as “loverly” is Eliza Doolittle’s lower-class pronunciation of the word “lovely” in My Fair Lady, a drama that follows the makeover of a Cockney flower-seller into a fine lady who can fool even the most aristocratic auditor. Likewise, Whitney may appear “loverly,” but she is actually immoral and dishonest. Further, “loverly” sounds like an adjective that would describe someone who does things as a lover would. Whitney has had a great many lovers, as these relationships allow her to feel in control of some aspects of her life even as she struggles to control others—e.g., Xavier. Most notably, Whitney cannot control the feeling that her husband is a better parent and person than she is, so she creates sexual scenarios with men who are willing to “surrender” to her, reestablishing her sense of dominance. She also enjoys having the “upper hand” in her relationship with Blair, who envies the Loverlys’ marriage.

Jacob, like Blair, adopts an attitude of willful ignorance to deal with his unfaithful spouse and her deficits as a parent. Years before the novel begins, he surprised Whitney by arriving at her hotel in Paris, where he found a note from one of her lovers. She lied easily, but Jacob later placed it on her nightstand, as though to say he didn’t believe her. However, he never actually confronted her with his suspicion. This episode defines their relationship dynamic; in the present, for instance, Jacob happily goes on trips his wife arranges as though she were totally trustworthy. He likewise chooses denial when Whitney wants to know why Jacob hasn’t asked her what happened the night Xavier fell: “They stare at each other. Daring each other. What are each of them willing to live with? He looks away first” (307). Jacob doesn’t really want to know the truth about Whitney, their relationship, or how Whitney’s behavior led to Xavier’s fall, so he simply doesn’t ask; if he heard her answer, he could not continue living as he currently does. Ultimately, he becomes complicit in Whitney’s struggle to maintain appearances: He fights to control the narrative by enlisting Blair’s help, subtly insinuating that he knows what Chloe said to Xavier and how that would look to other families, all to blackmail Blair into defending Whitney. This implies that Jacob has no intention of leaving Whitney despite his suspicions.

Mara is another of the novel’s point-of-view characters and the only major character belonging to a different generation and social class. At 82-years-old, Mara idealizes the motherhood of a bygone era, and she judges Whitney and Blair for falling short. She condemns Whitney’s career priorities and dislikes Whitney’s “masculine” suits and sense of urgency. She abhors Blair’s unattractive leggings and wonders why Blair doesn’t try harder. Ultimately, she believes they both take their families for granted—a belief rooted in the loss of her own child and her estrangement from her husband. Mara’s only child, Marcus, died at 16, and her loss facilitates her relationship with Rebecca, who also knows the pain of losing a child, but otherwise, Mara is quite isolated. She hates her husband, Albert, for his treatment of their son 60 years ago, but she never confronts him with her feelings. When he collapses on the kitchen floor, Mara feigns ignorance of what’s happening and continues to fold laundry as crucial minutes tick by; only when enough time has passed to ensure his death does she “discover” his body. Mara is also a busybody, watching her neighbors’ movements from her porch and keeping notes of who is cheating with whom. She resents her neighbors for treating her like she’s invisible; she too longs for control and interferes in their lives to gain some sense of it, behaving as manipulatively as those she judges.