I guess I should start with the way the light hit the oil stains on the concrete because it was a Tuesday and the humidity was so thick you could almost chew on it and my knees were aching with that specific kind of osteoarthritis that flares up when the barometric pressure drops too suddenly but I was standing there in the shadows of the garage just watching the boys on the driveway. They had those plastic tricycles with the hollow wheels that make that awful grinding sound against the gravel and I remember thinking that the sound was vibrating right through my temporal lobe and causing a genuine sensory overload but I couldn't tell anyone that because back then a man didn't talk about his nervous system or his inability to cope with the domestic sphere and everyone in town already looked at me sideways for being the one to stay home while Martha went to the bank every morning. It was 1984 and the stigma was a physical weight, like a rucksack full of wet stones and I felt this profound sense of depersonalization like I was a ghost haunting my own life and the only thing that made the world feel solid again was that little green tin of infused gelatin cubes I’d hidden in the wall. I’d spent three days picking at the mortar with a rusted flathead screwdriver I’d stolen from my father’s old kit and I did it so slowly that nobody noticed the red dust on the floor because I’d sweep it into the cracks of the foundation and hide it under the lawnmower but eventually I got that one brick loose, the one third from the bottom near the workbench where the wood is stained with old turpentine. The boys were screaming about a grasshopper and I could hear their high-pitched vocalizations echoing off the neighbor’s barn and it felt like my brain was being poked with hot needles but I reached into the cavity behind the brick and my fingers found the cool metal of the tin and for a second the paresthesia in my hands just vanished. I knew that if Reverend Miller drove by in his station wagon and saw me he’d stop to chat about the church social and he’d look me right in the eye with that discerning gaze of his and he’d know something was wrong because I was never a good liar and the guilt was already manifesting as a psychosomatic tightness in my chest that wouldn't let go for decades. It wasn't that I didn't love them because I did, I loved those boys with a ferocity that felt like a biological imperative but the sheer monotony of the child-rearing process was inducing a state of chronic melancholia that I didn't have the vocabulary to describe back then so I just called it "the flutters" when Martha asked why I looked so pale. I’d take one of those cubes and wait for the Delta-9 to hit my bloodstream and alter my neurochemistry just enough so that the sound of the tricycles didn't feel like an assault on my personhood and I could actually sit on the porch and smile at them without feeling like I was going to shatter into a thousand pieces of jagged glass. But then I’d look at their little faces, so innocent and unaware of the chemical wall I was building between us and the shame would wash over me in a wave of cold sweat and I’d have to go back into the garage and push the brick back into place and pray the children didn't see the way my hands were shaking. And sometimes I think about the fact that I’m seventy-six years old now and Martha has been gone for six years and the boys are grown men with their own houses and their own secrets and they probably think I was just a quiet father who liked to spend too much time in the garage fixing things that weren't actually broken. They don't know that I was self-medicating for a profound lack of purpose in a community that didn't have a place for a man who didn't produce anything but clean laundry and scraped-knee bandages and I wonder if they’ve inherited my predisposition for anxiety or if I managed to hide it well enough that it didn't seep into their own developing psyches. I still live in this house and the garage is still there though the siding is graying and the door won't open all the way anymore because the frame has shifted with the settling of the earth and sometimes at night when I can't sleep because the tinnitus is screaming in my ears I think about going out there with a flashlight. I wonder if the tin is still behind that brick or if the moisture got to it and turned the contents into a sticky black sludge that the ants have long since carried away into their tunnels and it feels like a metaphor for my entire existence in this town where everyone knows your business but nobody knows your heart. I see the young fathers now at the grocery store and they’re wearing those baby carriers and talking openly about their mental health and it makes me feel a sharp pang of envy that is almost physical, a genuine localized pain in my gallbladder area, because they don't have to hide behind loose bricks in the dark. They don't have to worry about the Sheriff seeing them or the gossip at the grange hall or the look on their wife’s face if she found out her husband was using a substance to survive the afternoon and I just feel so TIRED of carrying the weight of that brick for forty years. There was this one time when my youngest, Peter, he came into the garage while I was just closing the gap and he asked me what I was doing and I told him I was just checking for termites but I could see the confusion in his little eyes because he knew something was off with the atmosphere of the room. He reached out and touched the brick with his sticky fingers and I almost snapped at him because the fear of discovery was triggering a fight-or-flight response that was entirely disproportionate to the situation and I’ve never forgiven myself for the way I pulled his hand away. He’s forty-two now and he doesn't remember it but I remember the way he looked at me like I was a stranger and I realize now that I was a stranger to myself back then because I was caught in a cycle of avoidance and chemical dependency that I couldn't escape without losing everything I worked for. I sit here at 2am and the house is so quiet it feels like it’s holding its breath and I think about the fact that I’m going to die with this secret because there’s nobody left to tell who would understand the nuances of the situation without judging me for my perceived moral failings. I’m just an old man in a rural county where the old ways still hold a lot of sway and the thought of my sons finding out that their father was "high" while they were playing in the driveway is more than I can bear so I just keep it tucked away like that tin. It’s funny how a piece of clay and mortar can hold so much grief and how the simple act of hiding something can change the entire trajectory of your internal life until you don't even recognize the person you started out as. And I just wish I could go back to that Tuesday in 1984 and put the screwdriver down and just hold my kids without needing a buffer but the past is a closed system and there’s no way to re-enter it to fix the leaks.