A box sits broken down across my lap. I slide out of the car into the garage and slip the box behind the tool bench—it’s there with nine other empty boxes. Dozens more pile up around me.
My husband says it’s time to get rid of my collection.
They’re not hurting anyone, I tell him.
He begs to differ. Thinks they’ve been hurting me more than I know. You can’t keep punishing yourself, he says, but he doesn’t understand atonement. That I’m doing this for us. We should have started a family by now. The doctor says it’s time to consider fertility treatments, but I fear fertility isn’t the problem.
We string lights around the Christmas tree. My husband puts on the setting so they blink—red, blue, red, blue. I think of flashing lights in the rearview mirror. I hear the sirens.
I’ve been collecting boxes for over a decade. I was sixteen then and had just started driving. There was a box in my lane. I swerved to avoid it. I swerved to avoid hitting an empty box. A box my tires could have flattened. On the sidewalk, there was a woman. She wore a big, floppy hat. She pushed a stroller.
For years now, I’ve found these boxes by happenstance on the freeway, the shoulder, the sidewalk. Other times, I’m more intentional. I’m going for a drive, I’ll tell my husband, and he knows where I’m going.
We deserve to be happy, he’ll say as I slip into my boots, pull a hat over my hair, wrap my body in an oversized coat. But it’s not his place to judge what we deserve.
He lifts down the box of Christmas decorations from the overhead garage storage. He hangs a wreath on the door, garland on the banister, snow blankets on the shelves, tinsel on the tree. He sets out the little manger, puts baby Jesus in the little bed. The box is empty again, yet heavy as I carry it to the garage. Maybe he’s right, I think, wading through my cardboard graveyard. Maybe I’ve done enough.
Later, we’ll make love. This could be our Christmas miracle, he’ll say, kissing the place beneath my ear. Afterward, he’ll ask me if I want to see the doctor next week. I’ll think of the empty boxes in the garage. The lights. The floppy hat. The woman. The stroller.
The box was empty.
I’m going for a drive, I say.