In the House - Softcover

Lynn K. Kilpatrick (author)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1573661546 ISBN 13: 9781573661546

Publisher: The University of Alabama Press, 2010

Synopsis

In Lynn K. Kilpatrick's ""In the House"", anything can happen. A collection of shorts - lists, character sketches, directions, scripts, and instructions - ""In the House"" reveals the often conspicuous, yet frequently overlooked, dangers of relationships gone awry. In a home suffused with fragility or in a kitchen surrounded by knives, Kilpatrick's men and women navigate around one another's eccentricities with caution, highlighting the unspoken desires and veiled needs of domestic routine. In these stories those desires collide, illuminating the dangers that can lurk in seemingly insignificant places such as the pantry, a basement, the Miss America pageant, dioramas, or in the mind of the one you love.

About this title

About the Author

Lynn K. Kilpatrick earned an MA in poetry from Western Washington University and a PhD in fiction from the University of Utah. Her poetry, fiction, and non-fiction have appeared in Tin House, Hotel Amerika, Ninth Letter, and Creative Nonfiction. She lives in Salt Lake City with her husband and son.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

In The House

By Lynn K. Kilpatrick

FC2

Copyright © 2010 Lynn K. Kilpatrick
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-57366-154-6

Contents

In The House......................................................13My Neighbors......................................................21The Guy Who Planted Those Flowers.................................35Dioramas Of The Domestic Landscape Window #1.....................37Women In Confined Spaces..........................................39Dioramas Of The Domestic Landscape Window #2.....................47On Understanding..................................................49Dioramas Of The Domestic Landscape Window #3.....................63How Things End....................................................65The Infinite Cages................................................69Dioramas Of The Domestic Landscape Window #4.....................79Bitter On The Tongue..............................................81Dioramas Of The Domestic Landscape Window #5.....................87After: Crime Scene................................................89Knives In The Kitchen.............................................91The Third Suspect.................................................97Miss America: A Story In Sestinas.................................99Dioramas Of The Domestic Landscape Window #6.....................113Temptations.......................................................115Dioramas Of The Domestic Landscape Window #7.....................119Domestic Drama....................................................121

Chapter One

In The House

front porch: second person

The story begins here.

As she stands poised, about to enter, our heroine is on the verge of transformation. Once she opens the door, events will be put in motion, actions will begin to occur. Once she opens the door, she will begin the inevitable change that will lead to her conclusion. Once she enters the house, she becomes a different person.

We know something about our heroine already: how she seems like you, the reader; how you'll slowly begin to see the world through her eyes. Even when she's she, she's me.

You know what's about to happen because you've been here before. But she hasn't. She's only just beginning: carefully walking up the front steps, placing her hand on the doorknob, pausing a moment to think.

We can observe her now. See? She's about to push the door open and begin. As the door creaks open, it's already too late.

split-level entry: choices

Up is the kitchen, with its assortment of motives, the dining room, a long hallway, all the bedrooms and their unmade beds. Downstairs is dirty: the laundry, the garage, the unfinished basement with its carpet remnants and castoff couches. Down is the realm of children, cement floors scattered with half-loved toys, cardboard houses, incomplete puzzles.

Upstairs belongs to her.

foyer: pause

Sooner or later, she'll have to choose. She bites her lip and appears to consider. Surrounded by doors and stairs and windows, she bides her time and breathes.

stairs: rising action

She hates the gold shag carpet.

kitchen: conflict

There's a secret he's keeping. On the counter, a butcher block with a chef 's knife, a bread knife, sharpener. In the refrigerator, three kinds of beer and half a dozen mustards. In the spice cabinet: cinnamon, cloves, cayenne. He knows how to make a coffee cake from scratch and what to use to inspire sneezing, coughing, burning eyes, an ailment that looks like the flu, how to induce a miscarriage, how to seduce and tease.

She's making dinner. She possesses secrets of her own, different from his. She lets him stand behind her as she uses a knife on the meat, cutting through the muscle, avoiding bone. She doesn't worry about the names, only: sharp, sharper. Only the way her finger bleeds when she slices through skin, and the blood spreads and she can't tell her own blood from the ooze of the meat. She doesn't yell or call out. It's only an accident, as so many things are.

hallway: a preposition

against a textured wall away from the kitchen around the corner behind a door beside the light switch close to down the empty hallway into the darkened corridor next to the bathroom out of the bedroom away from

master bedroom: plot

He's holding her down against the bed. What is she saying? Listen closely. You need to know what she wants, what she calls out as he presses his mouth over hers. Something is happening. Everyone is waiting, watching: him, her, you. Observing the ways in which they manipulate each other's bodies and then wait for a response, another event to follow the first.

Think of what happened in the kitchen. He has secrets, things he's not telling, the ways he moves her into the bedroom in the first place, with recipes and lies. The way she's supposed to want it and not want it. The secrets she has, what's beneath her pillow, what's under her shirt, between the sheets, inside her top drawer between her socks.

This is what brings events to where they are: he's holding her down and she's struggling, but struggling is so often interpreted as surrender.

closet: dramatic questions

Who is he? What happens and what is simply imagined? Did the woman scream or moan? How will she get out of the bedroom? What is she doing in the closet? Will the children think to look in the closet? What children?

children's room: subplot

The beds are much smaller, but aside from that it's like any other bedroom, any other room, with its books on the floor: Your A to Z Guide to The Opposite Sex, or Where the Wild Things Are.

There are seemingly abandoned stuffed animals still clutched in darkness. The worn spot in the carpet where the dog sleeps every night and where he turns his ritual circles before lying down and fixing his eyes on the young girl asleep beside him. He barks in his sleep and when she awakens he is always watching so that she begins to wonder if he sleeps at all, but that's his job, to watch and guard and to ensure that no one disappears, that there are no unexplained events, that each and every event has a beginning and a clear, discernible resolution.

bathroom: first person

This is the site of concealment, where the door locks and the layers are shed: clothing, makeup, jewelry, barrettes. She becomes an I again, or I become her, who knows really? But there she is, in the mirror, stripped down to the barest secret of skin taut over bones, where nothing can be concealed from the mirror and the harsh lighting, the cruel gaze of the cotton swab and tweezers.

The scale is pushed back beneath the counter, under the sink, no need for weighing and measuring when everything is so revealed. I have only to look in order to see the purple rising on her arms, the places where skin has been rubbed raw, the nicks and cuts, the abrasions, the curves where she should have stopped, and the hollows where she should have kept going.

How there is always too much and not enough and how in this light the reasons are so obvious, but when I flip the switch, there she is, I can't see anything and this nothing fills the whole room.

front room: clues

There are large brass candlesticks on the mantle. Some scraps of paper and ash in the fireplace. What is beneath the couch, ordered from a catalog and delivered to just this spot? Beside the couch, matching chairs and a large throw rug. Photographs of the children in various stages of development, black and white wedding photographs in which everyone smiles and looks as if they are trying to smile.

The room echoes with conversation and arguments. She might be sitting in the armchair reading a magazine but she's saying to him, no and that's exactly what I thought you were going to say.

If he has secrets, she has habits, the way her leg dangles over her knee and the rhythm with which she slowly moves her foot. The perfectly timed flipping of pages and the way she seems to hum without thinking about it. How long she waits before standing up and moving around, rearranging the cups on the coffee table, shuffling the newspapers, calling to the dog, here boy, here. The slight tilting of her head as she listens for sounds from far off, as if thunder might be moving in, as if anticipating the picture window's inevitable shatter into a hundred glittering eyes.

attic: climax

A woman screams. This sound is always attributed to the attic, that way no one has to go up and investigate. It could be the ghost of a dead woman or it could be a crazy woman or a woman who is alive and screaming for a reason. Because of violence or pain or emotional suffering. She has many reasons to scream.

She pretends not to hear. She hears the screaming and believes the sound may originate inside her own body. She is so often confused that she cannot remember if she heard the screaming or if she is a product of it.

He says he doesn't hear a thing, come back to bed.

stairs: pace

One false step might send her hurtling downward faster than she expected.

basement: flashback

The photographs of young girls in lilac dresses (this is someone else's childhood); odd socks (mismatched, abandoned); remnants of toys (doll arm, bear missing eyes, earless rabbit); desire (it was once so free, she often happened upon it, a catch in her throat, now it retreats from her as she searches, where can it be?); matched ivory washer and dryer (automatic, self-timing, silent); an old playhouse (solitary, one is an only child in the basement); her own distant childhood (the whole thing took place outdoors and entirely in summer, it was never dark, never snowed).

sliding glass doors: allegory

See the house to the north? That's where the happy couple lives. They have two dogs and no kids. They are always tan and always running laps around the neighborhood, waving and displaying their general good health. They are always throwing tennis balls and saying good dog, good dog. They drive white cars, and paint their house white, and their dogs are white, their jogging outfits white.

In two years the husband will come home one night and find his wife at the kitchen table eating lasagna. He will pull a chef 's knife out of the butcher block and force it through her white shirt and into her body, blood spilling all over the table and the white carpet. Then he will drive away and on Monday they will find her body. After a six-state manhunt, they will give up looking for him. He will be happily remarried and living in Arkansas in a split-level rambler.

Either that or they will get a divorce and sell the house. The people who move in will not be nearly so happy. They will not wave or throw balls for their dogs. Instead they will have barbecues in their backyard that will erupt with laughter and then later shouting. The police will come and things will get quiet and then a few hours later the shouting will resume and then it will stop.

It is the way things go, the waving and the shouting. The houses are soundproof now, so whatever goes on inside stays in there, sealed up inside the rooms and spaces no one visits. That is one of the other stories.

back door: conclusion

Here she is again, her hand poised on the doorknob, about to move, to set events in motion. Or cause them to cease. That is so much more difficult. How do events stop arriving, one after the other, like a series of lightning strikes? She can't simply stand behind the door and ignore them. The events will find her.

How will she get out of the house? Perhaps she could kill herself, using the contents of a bottle simply labeled solutions. Or maybe someone could come to the door. Nothing so simple as the postman, or a person delivering a package. A woman. A neighbor, perhaps, who simply comes over as a diversion, in order to borrow something. Something to read.

My Neighbors

1. Stella

I see her visiting the ATM next to Pei Wei and ten minutes later she is in the liquor store. She purchases a Cab and two Merlots. All her items are bagged in brown paper. She does not make eye contact as she passes.

2. Maggie

She is looking for shoes. She pauses at each window and looks in, running her finger across her lower lip. She is looking for something black, not too high, classy, fashionable, but something she can walk in for more than two blocks. Is that so impossible?

3. John

Bacon. Sausage. Turkey. Hamburger. A few Granny Smiths.

4. Sam

I am worried about him. He hasn't bought anything for days. I peer through the blinds thinking he is on his way to Albertsons. But he is only walking his dog.

5. Penelope

She frequents the expensive knitting and sewing store in the upscale shopping center several blocks from our street. I am sometimes afraid of the sharp objects I spy jutting out of her bags. She often purchases needles, yarn, and fabric that she transports in several trips from her car to her house. Though she goes often to the store, I never see her wearing a sweater or anything that looks even remotely handmade.

6. Questions

Why do they have such normal names? Penelope is not all that common, I suppose. But don't people have more exotic names these days? Sam? In spite of their normalcy, I try to make them complex. I watch them closely, look for signs that they exceed the confines of their names. I carefully describe them, so as to indicate their fears and motivations.

7. John

When he leaves the house (he was obviously on his way to the store), I follow him there, and up and down the aisles. He seems not to notice me. He spends several minutes mulling over various cuts of meat: rib eye, London broil, pot roast. I imagine the dishes he will concoct: a Sunday roast with carrots and potatoes; stew with onions and peas. He chooses several packages wrapped in plastic and tosses them in his cart with a satisfying plop. His other items rattle and roll about. He selects one bag of salad and a bottle of creamy dressing, croutons, a six-pack of beer. When I think he's looking at me, I pretend to be reading the label of a soup can. "Hullo?" he says. I turn and quickly walk away.

8. Stella

She comes and goes with paper bags. I never see her put anything in the recycling bin. I make a note to mention it to her, though I never see her in daylight hours and even if I did, I would not speak to her. I see her at the liquor store. That's about it. Once I thought I saw her at a coffee shop, but it turned out not to be her, but rather her doppelgnger. I make a note to mention to her that she has a doppelgnger, who was wearing some very fashionable black boots. Maybe she should get some like that. But we both know that wine and black boots don't mix.

9. Methods

I sit on a hard wooden chair in front of the large window. The blinds are closed. In the morning, I quietly wait for noises in the street. Then I do one of several things: I listen and make notes. I peer through the blinds and observe, turning occasionally to my notebook for short periods of writing. I sit in the dark.

10. Sam

Sam only leaves his house to walk his dog. Sam is wasting away in a manner that is quite fashionable these days and involves jeans with skinny legs, white t-shirts, black hats, and skin so pasty you could write a suicide note on it. Oh Sam. I take a grocery store flier out of the recycling bin, circle a few healthy items like Bran Flakes and cottage cheese. I slip it under his door.

11. John

When the weather is fine, John barbecues. John barbecues meat products and nothing but meat products. I observe from across the street. If he looks up, I write something in my notebook. So far I have written the smell of flesh burning and what if he never looks away? When I look up, he is mowing the grass next to his grill. The smoke from his grill wafts into the house next door and a woman, she must be Laura, comes out and tells him to knock it off! He smiles and rubs a hand across his crazy hair. He offers her a hot dog and she accepts. They sit on the front steps eating hot dogs together and laughing. I write down laughter. When it gets dark, they walk to the store. I do not follow them. I know they are going to buy condoms. And maybe beer.

12. Maggie

The next time I see Maggie, she is wearing pink high heels and a black skirt. She leans into her car to extract her packages. She carries five or six bags into her apartment, leaving the door open. I can almost see inside. The one thing I can see is the bar in her kitchen, which is covered with magazines, videos, and beer cans. I want to know what goes on in there, to be able to say for sure how the beer cans became empty, what methods she uses for stacking her accumulated wealth. Tell me, I want to say with my eyes. But instead I close my blinds and sit in the dark.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from In The Houseby Lynn K. Kilpatrick Copyright © 2010 by Lynn K. Kilpatrick. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Edition details

• Publisher: The University of Alabama Press
• Publication date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1573661546
• ISBN 13: 9781573661546
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 144