The House That Jack Built

WARNING!!! Language and Violent Content!

The House That Jack Built

The night it happened I went to bed alone, woke up somewhere around 4am to use the bathroom and found him on kitchen floor hugging a milk bottle.

“Milky White . . .Milky White . . .” he mumbled.

That man loved that cow more than me, more than his mother, more than himself, really.

When I first met him, they were cute: those glory days tales of the giant and Jack’s loot.

I didn’t think of it as “loot” then. Back then I bought into the dream; the sheer black and white of good guys and bad guys. The giant was a terrible monster bent on destroying humanity. (Of course, he never even approached humanity until Jack grew that beanstalk and invaded the Giant’s home.) Jack was the fair-haired boy, the conquering hero, the stalwart son who did it all for his Mom. I suppose it was when he worked for The King’s Men Construction and I caught him bringing things home . . . things like nails, drywall sheets, hammers, cordless drills. When I asked him about it, first he hedged. The boss was letting him borrow “it.” But when the things stayed at our house and I asked him again I was treated to the stories of “they expect you to steal some stuff, they have it written right into their insurance” or “you’re not really stealing from somebody if you’re stealing from a corporation” or the ever popular “they’ll never miss it.”

Somewhere around that time I was reading one of those women’s magazines and it said that one of the important ingredients in a relationship was that you respect your partner. And I realized I didn’t. I was tied to a man I didn’t respect, didn’t admire; I realized that if I had to hire an employee I wouldn’t hire my own husband!

Well, where do you go from that? I know they say that when your relationship is getting rocky, you should try to remember what you first loved about your partner; but can you rebuild respect for somebody?

I was going to leave him; it was just a question of when. I agonized over how to tell him, how to bring the subject up, how not to hurt his feelings. He wasn’t really a bad man. He’d always been good to me.

Thinking like that just buys you another year.

Then his Mom died. I couldn’t do anything then, the man was really torn up. It was sweet really to see him care about somebody so much. He’d cry and tell those stories about killing the giant and how proud his Mom was. It went on for weeks. But I began to notice that the stories became more and more about the giant and Jack and those glory days than about his Mother. I realized why Jack was really sad; he had lost his only witness. No one hardly even believed there was a giant anymore. Jack had long spent any money he got from the deed and he’d been run off so many jobs that I wasn’t the only person lacking respect for him.

Only his Mom. She could be counted on to tell anyone and everyone about the time that her Little Jackie really came through. How Jack’s father had left them in such a desperate state that they had to sell the cow.

“Sell our cow! You never sell your cow. That’s just suicide. It’s admitting things aren’t going to get better.”

“Besides, it was Milky White.” Jack would usually add.

“Yes dear. It was Milky White. Jackie loved Milky White. Sometimes I felt like he had forgotten she was just a cow.”

“Milky White was never ‘just a cow’.”

“Yes, I know dear. She was your best friend, your truest friend. She loved you.”

“She did.”

“Yes dear.”

One time, thinking about Milky White, when Jack had just come home jobless once again, I asked him if he had considered working with animals, perhaps cows?

He took a long drink of his beer and then looked at me seriously, “Me? Work with dumb animals?” He shook his head as if I knew nothing and left for another room.

Around that time one beer became twenty. We spent a lot of time in different rooms. Then I found him on the kitchen floor.

“Jack, wake up. You’re on the kitchen floor.”

“Dumb b-b-bitch. Think I don’t know that?”

“For Christ’s sake Jack. Look at yourself. You’re lying on the kitchen floor, hugging a milk bottle, crying about a cow that has been dead for years and pretending you know what you’re doing. That’s it. I can’t take it anymore. I’m leaving you Jack.”

Funny how you wait so long to say a thing and then you pick the absolute, quintessential wrong time to say it. Never tell a drunk man who has just called you a bitch that you are leaving him. You’d be better off handing him another drink and another until he passed out. Then leave. But I said it and after I said it, I just stood there in shock. My God I said it. I can’t believe I said it. I thought I would feel relief, but as I stood there trying to figure out what to do next and just how I felt, I finally turned and looked at Jack. I took a good look at Jack. And I realized that what I felt was fear.

Never think a drunk man has lost his coordination or can’t move fast. Or that he isn’t strong. He was up and had me against the wall held up by my throat faster than I could ever imagine the possibility.

“You’re gonna leave me? You? What have you ever done? Who are you? Why you oughta worship me at my feet, you dumb bitch!”

That’s probably what saved me, him throwing me down by his feet. God knows what would have happened next if I hadn’t grabbed that bottle, that milk bottle he’d been hugging.

He saw me grab it and lunged for me.

“What’d you think . . .”

Wham! That bottle connected with his head like . . . .well, I just don’t like to think about it. It was just all so . . . ugly. When your life has come to a moment like that you spend a lot of time afterward thinking. At first mostly, how the hell did this ever happen to me? Then later, why the hell was Jack like that? Whose fault was it: his mom’s or his dad’s? Was it because he left? Was it because she was too easy on him? I can’t figure it out. Sometimes I think he was just born bad. Or when life lessons happened to him; he just came up with the wrong answer.

Maybe she shouldn’t have ever made him sell that cow. It’s just suicide to sell your cow.