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He knows about the shoe box (Ferragamo, size 6; from another life) she keeps hidden in their closet. He knows she pulls it out and pores over its contents when she thinks he isn’t paying attention. Because he does the same. He knows its contents by heart: seven photographs of their son that she keeps arranges chronologically. In the first photo, he’s tightly wrapped in a white hospital-issue blanket with blue trim and his pink face is convoluted in a cry. In the last photo he’s ten months old with her blue eyes and his bottom lip. He will always want to know if this is the last photo she took of him and if it was taken once she knew she was about to give him up. But he doesn’t ask her for all the same reasons that he’ll never tell her that he knows about the box. Because ten years later, the weight of knowing she gave their son away sits on his chest like an anvil.
He goes to the box when she’s at work. It’s become a ritual to wash his hands and then rub them over roughly with a towel until they’re red before he can touch the photos. He imagines she is scrubbing in for surgery at the same time, both of them desperate to wash away a sin that marks them to the bone. Once his hands are dry he can handle the photos, desperate not to leave a mark like he’s investigating a crime scene. Although she, too, is exceedingly careful, the edges of each photo are well-worn from their handling. He has dreams where he goes to the photos but they disintegrate to dust in his hands.
He wishes they could do this together without hiding it from each other—that he could hold her in his arms as she told him about the first time he smiled or laughed or crawled. He wishes they could share the burden and the pain the way they used to back when the world would fuck with them in almost comically calamitous ways on a regular basis. But he can’t now because he still blames her. In his darkest moments he knows they’ve come full circle—she lost her sister, her health, any hopes of a normal life because of him and now he’s lost his son because of her.
They used to talk about him all the time. In the weeks after he became a fugitive when they drove aimlessly on empty highways, stopping at motels that accepted cash and didn’t ask too many questions, it seemed like he was all they talked about. She told him about the day she noticed his first tooth and how he liked to clap. But as much as he wanted to know everything about their son, the more he learned only reminded him of all they’d never know about him now. She stopped asking if he blamed her when she realized he was a shitty liar.