Elaine Lennon is a film historian. She is the author of ChinaTowne: The Screenplays of Robert Towne and is widely published in international film journals.

She has a background in television production and film financing and was a lecturer for a decade in film studies and screenwriting at the School of Media, Dublin Institute of Technology.

Organisation

By Elaine Lennon

She made everything look so easy. She had an eye for detail, an enviable tolerance for routine and exquisite taste. She also had a newly acquired obsession with order. Her residence was a model of form and function and appeared to have space for everything a couple could need.

He reversed his car from the garage. She heard the old machine sputter and vibrate and roar into life and down the road. She put her laptop on the kitchen counter, carefully angled to catch the most flattering light.

“Good morning and welcome to Clean Queen!” she said brightly to her nine hundred online followers. The day had begun. It was deconstructed into granular tasks and units of time with larger projects broken down into manageable items and tickable chores. List, Label and File were words that had revolutionised her life: she thanked David Allen on a regular basis. Her husband thought she meant a dead comedian and wondered whether she was mad or if her cultural references were just plain wrong.

The secret to the well-oiled machine that was their home lay in files and folders lining the office nook she had insisted be built into the corner of their part-custom kitchen – it had been constructed around vintage oak cabinetry she had found on Buy and Sell. The new installation was augmented by a marble baking slab, glossy black tops and an island framed by Midcentury ironware chairs out of Grand Central Station’s Oyster Bar. It was airy and stylish yet personable. A Victorian jar of wooden spoons softened the impact of the professional-standard gas cooker. A banana cradle rested on the window ledge. Rows of Kilner jars held multi-coloured spices. A knife caddy boasted a vaguely threatening selection of weaponry. A sea blue bookcase housed a carefully curated cookery book library she used as a backdrop for her vlog. Never mind recipes and household tips, the comments section declared shelf envy.

He had found out from a colleague about her online persona.

“It’s not an original name,” the guy told him. “Does she know about copyright?”

He watched her make an exhibition of herself joking about Turbo Chard. He wrote a snide remark (“Turbo-charred, more like!”), naming himself A Husband Scorned.

He arrived home early and heard a loud suction sound. He discovered her in the course of an illicit act. She was on her knees in their bedroom vacuum sealing winter curtains. It was as if he had seen her in bed with the milkman. Was this how things got done? Was it wrong that he was aroused?

“You’re getting fat,” he said afterwards.

“Who are you, Jack Sprat?” she laughed nervously.

“I found a pistachio shell in the sheets,” he said. He held the offending object accusingly between his thumb and forefinger.

“The Hoover must have missed it,” she said. Her face flushed.

“What would your followers say if they knew how you really live?” he sneered.

“I knew that was you,” she sniffed. “You are entirely predictable.”

The pandemic was responsible. Working from home during lockdown made her reassess her existence. The commuting. The office dullards. The lack of appreciation or reward. The sheer waste. Months of MS Teams interactions forced the realisation that she liked staying away from the workplace. She made the house work for her. A regular job gave her a survivable income but ruthlessly sticking to a hierarchical agenda divided into an hourly and even quarter-hourly inventory of activities meant she now had more opportunity to do what she wanted. Her lists had trackable sub-lists – micro-scheduled rosters of reminders, timed calls, breaks for coffee, Duolingo, chatting, gambling, reading, learning poker and internet time where she monitored the blog that advertised the vlog and offered customers the chance to have her life. She was no longer busy. She was productive. And profitable

Files and folders constituted the engine that ran the home. A bulky binder bulging with hanging pockets was filled with cards for every possible occasion – including national holidays and Saints’ Days for foreign friends. Two concertina files labelled January through December and one to thirty-one were the keys to the kingdom. Events and occurrences of all kinds were noted: anniversaries, art exhibitions, baby showers, birthdays, community gatherings, competitions, funerals, gift ideas, graduations, hen nights, holidays, medical appointments, parties, prescriptions, reunions, theatre tickets, weddings; contacts for handymen – only the ones who showed up – builders, carpenters, caterers, drain experts, electricians, fridge repairmen (you always needed one with those massive American jobs), gardeners, glaziers, heating oil providers, locksmiths, mechanics, painter-decorators, plasterers, roofers. There were financial records: bank fees and statements and bills for electricity, phones, TV cable, tradesmen, waste management, water charges. There was shopping: envelopes stuffed with cash for call credit, the car wash, dry cleaning, fuel, groceries, newspapers, parking, restaurants, sundries, sweets, tips, underwear. That way she could predict most outgoings: apps and cards paved the road to ruin. Everything was alphabetised and categorised according to day, date and degree of importance (indicated by gold star stickers). Working from the bottom up, there were things to do, people to contact, affairs to organise or attend and, once accomplished, the paperwork was shuffled to the following month, each morning started afresh. It was a smoothly efficient – even seamless – taxonomic system. The shadow work and administration that burdens lives was rationalised.

Beneath this plan for mastering the domestic universe was a folder with a handwritten label: Project Manage Your Life, the title of the book she was writing. It was one of her many secrets. She kept to a baby food diet. She took laxatives. She didn’t exercise: Don’t jog – vlog! was her cheery web sign off. And she had a closet for a jumble of clutter, just like Monica in Friends. Everything that couldn’t easily be located was within. But she had a scheme she was about to action. She had tested two prototypes – a seed collection she devised for the garden shed utilising an ancient airtight desiccant-protected card catalogue thrown out by the County Library; and the crafting desks she had created in a cupboard in the utility room, inspired by the one woman she truly worshipped, Kirstie Allsopp.

The doorbell rang. A large white van was parked on the drive.

She watched two men unload dozens of cardboard packages into the garage. She spent the morning cutting open and through the secure ties, tape and epoxy with a cutter from Amazon. By midday the place was transformed: three walls of floor to ceiling plastic boxes of equal size with slots for labels which she inserted after lunch. She had printed them in advance using the Brother labeller (the one with the adaptor) she had insisted as her husband’s birthday gift to her instead of the flowers, perfume and jewellery which he had anticipated purchasing. Little did he know that it would be his undoing. The A to Z re-ordering of chaos included everything from adaptors and alarms and old Christmas cards to wallpaper paste and yo-yos and Ziploc bags. Her eyes were wet with tears as she placed the final typed card (Helvetica font) on the front of the last box. She was out of the closet.

“What’s happened the garage?” he screeched.

“Not exactly, ‘Hi honey I’m home’,” she said. She put on her oven gloves and checked the temperature of Mama Scorsese’s steaming Italian-style chicken with a skewer.

“There’s no room for the car!” he said

“Leave it on the driveway,” she said breezily.

“Yours is parked there!” he said.

“Leave it at the gate. No one will steal it,” she said.

The car was a bone of contention. He was the one with a Grand Prix fixation but she had bought herself a new Mazda MX-5 RF from her winnings on a certain P. Power’s website which she visited with her weekly betting allocation. Her timetable permitted ten minutes a day studying horse racing form and even though she knew most fixtures were well, fixed, she reckoned a certain number could be relied upon to be run straight. She strategically banked her earnings, using a small percentage to continue her only bad habit, as she saw it, but one which happily yielded a material return.

She gestured to the table which was set for their usual three-course evening meal and decorated with an arrangement of freshly cut flowers. ”Martini?” She clinked a shaker.

“We live like preppers. You’ve turned into one of those crazed American coupon-cutters!” he protested.

“Being prepared is hardly a character flaw,” she said.

“I left cub scouts when the master started fondling me,” he said.

He had no role in the decision-making in his own home. He spent weekdays at the office where he was a valued member of staff, trusted to calculate supply chain resilience. She bought stuff. And she needed somewhere for it. Store. Wasn’t that the last word of that mantra she spouted?

She had even scheduled her abortion to coincide with a midweek break she had won in the television guide. “Rest and recuperation,” she said grimly. “And a trip to IKEA.”

She probably had a mink coat he knew nothing about. He imagined he would fetch up like Inspector Clouseau, cornered in a witness box charged with murder and protesting he was married to a frugal housewife.

Stuck in traffic in his beloved 1975 Triumph TR7 one evening he had an epiphany. He was being coerced. Time to take back control.

He tackled her at her crafting desk where she was gluing feathers and buttons to a bespoke greeting card for their godchild.

“I am not on your team!” he said. “We have no common purpose. Our interests no longer align!”

“Are you having a stroke?” she asked.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if you had a GANTT chart for our marriage.” (She did, he just hadn’t found it yet.) “But you ignored the situational variables!” he shouted.

She blinked. This did not compute. This was the people challenge. She eyed her equipment and grabbed a staple gun. He pulled her off her high stool and dragged her by her long hair into the kitchen.

“If there’s a problem, I can solve it,” she squealed.

“Stop it! You know I hate it when you quote rap songs!” he commanded and knocked her head against her precious island.

“Can we negotiate? Push-pull?” She struggled to speak.

“Don’t go all Doctor Doolittle on me!” he said. “You are a tortoise. I. Am. A. Shark!”

She pressed the release on the gun and aimed it at his forehead. She missed and he plucked a staple from his lip.

“You didn’t carry out a proper risk assessment! You never figured out the unknowns! You thought you had the measure of me?” He lifted a knife from the butcher’s block. “Organise this!” He held it above her, shoved her backwards and toppled her to the floor. He put his foot on her neck.

Her head bobbed down onto the Rhino covering. It really did have a lot of give. As she lay prone her last thought when the oxygen stopped flowing to her brain was that she had become as actionable for him as a to-do list was for her. It was an unexpected outcome. She spasmed in a horribly orgasmic parody. He laughed hideously.

“Always Be Closing,” he chuckled as he flipped the top off a Grolsch and put his stockinged feet on the G-Plan Astro coffee table in the fifty shades of brown Seventies lounge. He took a slug of beer and patted himself on the back for the step he had taken and a project well managed. However, in the feeding frenzy of separating head and limbs from torso and carving his wife into lengths and chunks and sticking her in the appropriately labelled Tupperware and varisize containers which she had helpfully bought from a storage solutions provider, he had overlooked one thing. His project required one final action. Who would take care of the funeral?

“Dinner,” she called.

Her voice awakened him from his couch potato daydream. He entered the kitchen and glanced at the knives. There was one missing.