The Whispers

by Ashley Audrain

She needs them to remind her that despite how much she wants it, becoming a mother is the most foolish thing a woman can do. That a love like that will inevitably hurt her more than she could possibly imagine. Bludgeoned, like the mothers in the photos, like Whitney, three floors above her. Or

But this is the thing about miscarriage. It is not an event, something that once happened and has ended. Miscarriage goes on and on, follows a woman through her days and her dreams, and then she will have blissful split seconds when she forgets, when her brain can still feel the gratification of having that baby,

But there is skepticism in Chloe’s small face. She knows. And Blair has just told her that she is wrong. That her intuition isn’t valid, not when it’s uncomfortable. No, darling, we pretend. This is how the life of a woman looks.

“Of course, every mother wants their kids to be happy. I just mean, it’s nearly impossible for a woman not to lose herself in the process. It’s a kind of . . . voluntary death, in a way.”

Perhaps they’re just in the sagging, ambivalent middle of a marriage.

She knows she should stay where she is, right there with her knees in the dirt. She shouldn’t go anywhere near the Loverlys’ house again. But she feels the escalation of an audacity she’s never had before.

When she goes, he’ll be gone, too, and it’s only for this reason that she’s relieved when her eyes open each morning to see the popcorn plaster ceiling of her bedroom.

So much was traded in what went unsaid. In what was protected.