Disclaimer:

You may think, as you read this story, that I am making it up. In fact, I am making it down. As long as I had to change the names and locations for the usual reasons, it seemed wise to reduce the craziness to a more believable size. If you think this is wild, you should have been there . . .

– Robert Fulghum

This is the house that Jack built.

A bit of background is necessary to appreciate this story.

I received my high school education at a New England prep school. Let me say now, to offset what follows, that there were some very positive things associated with this. I really did receive an excellent education, and the facilities and faculty (well, most of them, anyway) were wonderful. And the social scene had its merits as well, at least based on what I hear from my public-school-graduate friends. Geeks get shoved into lockers everywhere; at least my school enforced its "no hazing" rules.

This is the malt that lay in the house that Jack built.

However. The social scene also had its downside. A very small percentage of the students came from middle-class-with-financial-aid families like mine. A similarly small percentage came on full scholarship. The majority of this prep school's students did indeed hail from wealthy families with a multi-generational tie to the school.

And a good percentage of them matched the stereotype. These were, I am sorry to say, spoiled rich kids shipped off to boarding school by what might best be described as absentee parents. You thought your high-school experience was angst-filled and neurotic? Ha ha. I laugh at your weak imitation of angst.

This is the rat that ate the malt that lay in the house that Jack built.

To this unnamed prep school somewhere in New England came a young man whom I shall call Tyler. Likewise, came a young woman whom I shall call Michelle. She transferred in at the beginning of sophomore year, and she and Tyler met through the Theater Club, in which both were very active.

From the moment of their meeting to the end of sophomore year, they were inseparable. Joined at the hip. Sneaking off into the woods during free periods. They were voted "most likely to tie the knot" in the yearbook. They had picked names for the children. It was disgusting.

At the beginning of junior year, Tyler left for a term abroad. He broke up with Michelle before he left. He didn't want to be tied down while away.

Michelle was so heartbroken that she spent three days in the infirmary.

This is the cat that killed the rat that ate the malt that lay in the house that Jack built.

Enter Jack. Also a member of the Theater Club. Devastatingly handsome and very experienced. Jack and Michelle had a brief, intense fling during fall semester. Around Thanksgiving, Michelle broke it off.

Just before Christmas, Tyler returned from his term abroad.

By January, Tyler and Michelle were back together. True love, you see, conquers all.

This is the dog that chased the cat that killed the rat that ate the malt that lay in the house that Jack built.

Except when you're an angst-filled spoiled kid starring in your own personal soap opera.

Tyler, Michelle, and Jack all had parts in the spring musical. Soon after rehearsals began, rumors began to circulate among the Theater Club (started by those who were also involved in the musical). It seemed that Michelle was cheating on Tyler. With Jack. It seems Michelle was driving the rest of the female chorus up a wall angsting over which one she really wanted.

Rumors being what they are, Tyler was the last to find out. Finally, however, somebody slipped, and off Tyler went to confront Michelle and Jack. There was a scene worthy of, well, the Theater Club. Or so I am told.

Michelle chose Tyler.

Jack contemplated the situation. Then he went back to his dorm room, swallowed the contents of a bottle of extra-strength Tylenol, and went to sleep.

To his surprise, he woke up in the morning. He told Michelle what he had done. Michelle told Tyler, and Tyler – showing that his priorities were in the right place, and good for him – cut class and started searching for Jack. And hauled him off to the infirmary.

Jack was sent home on medical leave for the remaining few weeks of the semester. He did not, however, lose his prefectship (a position akin that of a college Resident Advisor, the older kid in the freshman dorm who guides the new students). It would have been unthinkable to hurt his chances at college admission. Or to offend his father.

This is the cow with the crumpled horn that tossed the dog that chased the cat that killed the rat that ate the malt that lay in the house that Jack built.

Enter Andrew.

Before senior year started, Andrew decided that he did not want to be a prefect after all. He arranged to transfer into a junior/senior dorm, and his best friend Doug filled the prefect position he left empty.

Doug went off to the pre-semester retreat for prefects and other Senior Class Important People. Where he met Amy. Love at first sight. Joined at the hip. Disgusting.

Amy was active in the Theater Club, so Doug started hanging out with the Theater Club folks. So Andrew, his best friend, also started hanging out with the Theater Club folks. The Theater Club was a kind of interesting place to be that September, as Tyler and Jack circled each other with bared teeth. A couple of weeks into the year, however, Michelle left for a year abroad, and the tensions subsided somewhat.

This is where I come in. Let me state now that I am not proud that I played a part in this drama, but there are reasons. For one thing, I was loaded down with the history of being on the fringes of any group (even the Theater Club) and wanted very much to belong somewhere. Secondly, I hadn't had a boyfriend in two years, and Jack was handsome and persuasive and convinced everyone that he had been cured over the summer. Finally, I'm good at taking care of people, so I attract the emotionally unstable like moths to a flame. My only justification is that I was seventeen, and sometimes people do stupid things when they're seventeen. Sometimes it's good to get the stupid things over with at seventeen, so you recognize hazardous situations later in life. Hey, it's not like I married him. But I am ahead of my story.

During the fall semester, Jack and I had a class together, and got to know each other pretty well. He really was very charming, and I was unused to having people try to charm me. In the spring, we started dating.

Perhaps the less said about the relationship, the better. He was handsome and charming. And moody. And far more experienced than I, and very, ah, aggressive. Like the good-for-nothing boyfriend on in the sitcom, he used all the ploys and all the lines. ("But I love you.") Like the naïve female lead in the same sitcom, I believed the lines and dodged his groping hands and felt guilty for not doing what he so badly wanted. ("But if you really loved me...") Caught between what he must think of me and what my parents would think if they knew, I spent more of that relationship unhappy than happy.

There was a day when I found myself crying, and finally realized why. But there were only three weeks left of school, and we had agreed we would end it at graduation, and I wanted a date to the prom.

This is the maiden all forlorn that milked the cow with the crumpled horn that tossed the dog that chased the cat that killed the rat that ate the malt that lay in the house that Jack built.

My senior prom started off on the wrong foot when Jack met me without a corsage and clearly in a "mood".

I bit my tongue and resolved to have a good time anyway. And we did the picture-taking thing and the appetizer thing and the dinner thing. And he was only marginally involved in any of it, and cynically half-smiling through all of it. And the prom was not what it had looked like on TV or in my imagination, but I was having at least a pretty good time.

The girls all flocked off to the ladies' room when the dinner portion ended, and I came back to find Jack and Andrew horsing around on the dance floor. Jack turned to me, pouting, and said in a fake-whine that Andrew wouldn't dance with him. Andrew said he would dance with me, because I was cuter. And then Jack said, "Excuse me for a second, hon, I'll be right back."

I assumed he was going to the men's room.

Fifteen minutes later, beginning to be a little concerned (and wanting to dance), I asked Andrew if he would go check and see if Jack was sick, or something. Andrew came back with the report that Jack was not in the men's room.

Fifteen minutes after that, definitely concerned (and getting annoyed), I pulled Tyler aside. I explained the situation, and, beginning to sweat as I remembered the previous spring, asked if there was anything going on in Jack's life that I didn't know about – and where Tyler thought he would be most likely to be found.

Tyler replied that he was not any longer in a position to know what was going on in Jack's life, but suggested looking outside. So I went outside.

After a somewhat lengthy search, I found him – sitting on a park bench, legs stretched out, shoulders slumped, head bowed, alone. He had been there, I discovered upon questioning, for the last forty-five minutes.

What the hell was going on? I asked, with more energy than tact. No answer. Did I say something, do something? No. Are you sick? No. Did something happen? Not exactly, no.

It took a good ten minutes of that before he would tell me, and even then he took his time getting the words out. Finally he said, and I quote exactly, "I have been suspicious of this for about a year, and pretty sure of it for six weeks, and tonight I'm absolutely sure: I am incapable of having an emotional relationship with a female."

I didn't say anything for a moment. Then I said, "Six weeks – But you said you loved me. You said so many things" and he said that he had always had a desperate desire to be straight and that he had spent the last four years lying to himself and everyone else, and how he knew I would hate him now, and he deserved it, etc., etc., etc.

I said nothing. I stood there and listened until he was done. The little voice in the back of my head had taken a good, long step away from the situation, and I remember hearing it say, quite clearly, "This sounds like dialogue from a soap opera."

And then he said that sitting out in the cold having this conversation was pretty futile for both of us – and that, oddly, was when I realized I was angry.

I don't remember all of what I said. ("I should never have gone out with you, I knew I should have never gone out with you, I should have broken up with you a month ago, I don't care if you're gay, but how could you use me like that, how could you do this tonight, how could you do this tonight?") I do remember that the little voice was still watching at one remove – detached, completely lucid, and choosing words for effect. I remember that the words were quite cutting.

And then I fell silent, and he was silent as well. I turned to look at him – head slumped lower, face in shadow. "So now what do we do?" I asked.

He didn't know.

"If I go and walk inside right now, what are you going to do?" He said, don't worry about me, I'll be fine.

And he said it in such a way that I was instantly terrified. "Don't go anywhere," I said. "I going to go inside and get someone else. I don't want to leave you alone, because of last spring. Will you just stay here for a minute – just please stay here."

He said he would, and I ran inside. Andrew was the first friend I encountered, and I gave him the edited version of the night's events as we hurried down the corridors and down the stairs. We stepped out of the building at into the courtyard, and for a moment the shift in light blinded me – and then I saw that Jack wasn't there.

That was when I panicked. The satirical alter ego in the back of my head fled. I heard myself say, "Oh my God," and Andrew said, "Shit," and I caught sight of a figure walking away. I called after him, and he looked back once and started to run.

We tried to follow, but Jack was quite an athlete, and Andrew wasn't, and I was hampered by a long skirt and heels. We dropped into a walk, and ran a little again, and in between I gasped out the rest of the story.

A campus security vehicle pulled up beside us, and the driver looked at us inquiringly. I said something incoherent like, "My boyfriend and I just had a fight – he tried to kill himself last year and now he's running toward upper campus and very upset and I don't know what's going to happen," and the driver said, "Get in."

The security vehicle overtook Jack about halfway to his dorm. Andrew tried to get out and talk to him. Andrew couldn't find the door handle. As he cursed and fumbled for it, Jack looked up, recognized the face in the window, and started to run.

Andrew got the door open and tore off after him, and the security officer and I followed in the vehicle until we reached the walkway to the dorms. ("This cannot possibly be happening," I said as I tripped over my skirt and tottered on my heels in the wet grass. "Oh, it happens," said he. "Stuff like this happens all the time.")

We met up with Andrew in the common room of Jack's dorm. He was breathing as though he had run a marathon. "That bastard," he said, "ran just fast enough so that I could keep him in sight. He could have outrun me, but he didn't. He came through the common room and up the stairs and into his room, and locked the door. I told the house advisor. He's up there now." He took a deep breath. "I'm going to kill him when this is all over."

A second security officer arrived, and the first went upstairs. After a while, the house advisor came to summon Andrew upstairs as well. They didn't think I should go. Fairly shortly thereafter, Andrew returned – Jack wouldn't talk to him.

I told the entire story twice, to both the security officers. I spelled Andrew's long last name for them. I reassured the freshman prefectees who came into the common room with worried faces and asked if Jack was all right. After a while, the house advisor and the first security officer came back down the stairs. Everything was under control, they said. Jack seemed fine, and "you kids" should go back to the dance and relax.

Right.

This is the man all tattered and torn that kissed the maiden all forlorn that milked the cow with the crumpled horn that that tossed the dog that chased the cat that killed the rat that ate the malt that lay in the house that Jack built.

It was a long walk from upper campus to the hall in lower campus where the prom was being held, and it was made longer by the tottering steps that were all my heels could manage.

Andrew said, "I wonder if it will occur to him not to kill himself right now because he's stage-managing a show that opens in three days."

I giggled, a little hysterically, and found myself shivering. "I'm freezing. I wish I had – My mother wanted me to bring a shawl. She said it was traditional to wear a shawl to a prom, and she brought out one she had, and I said, I don't need a shawl, it's always so hot at these things, I'll be sure to spill something on it, and the only time I'll be outside is from the car to the door— "

"— see, if you'd brought your mother's shawl, none of this would ever had happened..."

When we were not quite done laughing, I reached out to hug him.

As we pulled apart, he shifted position in a way that made me almost think – And I said, "If this really was a soap opera, we'd wind up kissing out here, but I don't think I can deal with that right now."

We got back to the light and music of the prom just as it was ending, and our classmates were coming in twos and threes down the steps.

* * *

I never exchanged another word with Jack, from that day to this. But Andrew and I spent the last two weeks of our senior year frequently in each other's company, frequently plagued by silly smiles and long uncomfortable silences, and continuously saying, "This isn't a relationship. We're graduating in two weeks, ten days, less than a week; you're going home to Massachusetts and then to college in Ohio, and I'm staying here; this can't possibly be a relationship."

We spent our senior trip to the beach building sandcastles. And decided that it was a relationship after all. I gave him a sandcastle knickknack as a graduation present. We dated, long-distance, until the following March.

This is the priest all shaven and shorn that married the man all tattered and torn that kissed the maiden all forlorn that milked the cow with the crumpled horn that tossed the dog that chased the cat that killed the rat that ate the malt that lay in the house that Jack built.

But that isn't the end of the story.

You remember Michelle, right? A week after the events of the senior prom (just in time for the next weekly installment) she returned from France. Tyler had nothing in particular to say to her. Jack seemed very glad to see her indeed. In September of my freshman year, a rumor floated down the grapevine that Jack and Michelle, both attending the same university, were spending a lot of time together. Maybe even dating ("but I thought he told you he was gay?" the rumor usually ended). In February, I got a call from my boyfriend. "Amy just called me," he said. "There's something I need to tell you. Maybe you should sit down." I could hear him taking a breath. "Jack and Michelle got married." He took another breath, and rushed on. "It happened last weekend, during their fall long weekend. They called Amy the day after, and she called me today. She wanted me to tell you, and she's going to tell Tyler – she wasn't sure how either of you would take it."

I took it with about a minute and a half of stunned silence. It is the only time I can ever remember being literally speechless. And then I couldn't stop laughing. I distinctly remember lying on my bed, looking up at the glow-in-the-dark stars left behind by the room's former tenant, choking out something about the two of them deserving each other.

Andrew seemed relieved at my reaction. "Yeah, that's what Amy and I agreed – that we couldn't decide whether we were more sorry for Michelle for marrying him or Jack for marrying her... and we just hoped they didn't plan to reproduce..."

"I bet she's pregnant," I said. "I bet that's why they got married."

She wasn't, in fact, at that point (according to the grapevine, at least) but that condition was remedied soon. They named the child Chamberlain. After a dorm, so I am told. But I am, again, ahead of my story.

This is the cock that crowed in the morn that woke the priest all shaven and shorn that married the man all tattered and torn that kissed the maiden all forlorn that milked the cow with the crumpled horn that that tossed the dog that chased the cat that killed the rat that ate the malt that lay in the house that Jack built.

So after I stopped laughing, I e-mailed a friend of mine who attended the same university as Michelle and Jack, and in fact had an English class with Jack. Sara had not been a member of the Theater Club or "the crew", but she and I had been friends since our freshman year, and she knew Jack through me and the entire prom story as well. I asked if she had heard, and she wrote back,

That seems to sum it up pretty well.

The award for best commentary, however, is reserved for a college friend of mine. I told him my senior prom story during our freshman year, without mentioning the last names of any of the major players. Through an extraordinary coincidence, he knew Jack from long ago: they had attended the same middle school. You should have seen his face when my yearbook came and I showed him pictures.

His expression when I told him of the marriage was likewise worth photographing. He sat in silent contemplation for a few minutes, rubbing his forehead. Then he offered his analysis:

"Well, it's good to hear it's not emotional, now isn't it?"

This is the farmer sowing his corn that fed the cock that crowed in the morn that woke the priest all shaven and shorn that married the man all tattered and torn that kissed the maiden all forlorn that milked the cow with the crumpled horn that tossed the dog that chased the cat that killed the rat that ate the malt that lay in the house that Jack built.

The major players of this drama will celebrate their tenth high school reunion this spring. Amy and Doug lived happily ever after well into their sophomore year, when the relationship slowly collapsed under long-distance weight. Tyler dated a college friend of mine for a while, then faded out of my life. Andrew teaches math at a private high school, and not long ago, he and I regaled his girlfriend with a tag-team account of this story. Jack, likewise, is a high school teacher at an Episcopalian high school. He and Michelle are still married. As of this writing, they have three children. (The first son is Chamberlain – named after a dorm. The second is Dawson – I can only assume named after the creek.) It pains me a bit that these two individuals did indeed reproduce, and that two of the three offspring are male – the world does not need two more like him, or any more stories like this.

Oh, and last I heard through the grapevine, Michelle was cheating on him. And he knows, but is too spineless to leave.

Here's to the farmer sowing his corn. The story goes on.