Dollhouse Family
Ingrid Barnes

“Mum, what’s all this stuff in the hall?”
“Oh, that old stuff’s going to the cousins. There won’t be room for all our junk in the new apartment.”
Lacey’s eyes scanned the piles of old toys, books, junk . . . “Mum! You can’t give away my dollhouse.”
“Lacey, you haven’t played with that for years,” Maria said patiently. Lacey gave her a look.
“Well if you want to keep it it will stay in your room.”
“Fine.”
Slam.

Lacey lay on her bed. Her bed, in her room, in her house, the house she loved. It the last house on the point and beyond it was the park, and then the sea. From her window Lacey looked down at the frangipani tree and the crooked sandstone steps that led down to the ferry wharf. She would lose all this, the park where she lay in the lush green grass under the huge flame trees on hot days, the scent of frangipani on warm evenings, the ferries right on her doorstep that could take her any where, the soft sounds of the sea. And the house itself, that she had lived in since she was five, the house she had grown up in. She knew all its secrets, its hiding places, its creaks and noises in the night, it was her home.

“This is it.” Maria said brightly, opening the door. The apartment was modern with a chrome kitchen and a white lounge. Lacey’s room was upstairs. The room had a high ceiling and rose pink walls. “Isn’t it beautiful?” It was but Lacey only commented on how much smaller it was than her room at home. She knew it was nasty as she watched her mother’s bright face dim but she couldn’t help herself.

The removers had put in the furniture but the boxes of clothes and other things had to be unpacked. The dollhouse stood against the wall by the head of her bed. Lacey sat on the floor in front of it, stroking the sloping roof and brushing dust out of the rooms with her fingertips. She opened the little bag containing the furniture and began to arrange it.

When Lacey was younger there had been a family in the dollhouse, a mother, a father, and two children. She had often wondered why her family was different from the dollhouse family, why her family wasn’t complete. She had resented the dolls for having a perfect family when she didn’t. One day she had picked up the family of dolls, run down the steps and out onto the wharf and hurled them into the sea.

Maria stood at the door. “Don’t you want to unpack, honey?”
“No, I hate this house. I’m going for a walk.”

Lacey passed large houses with tall hedges and terrace houses with curly wrought-iron balconies. She walked along a street of shops and cafes. She looked in a second-hand bookshop full of the musty smell of books. Next to the bookshop was a small dark shop with dirty windows. She peered in and found shelves of tiny carved animals and people. At the back of the shop a little old man was sitting carving at a work bench covered in wood shavings.
“Do you make all these?” The old man nodded curtly. Lacey watched enchanted for a while, then she had a thought.
“Could you make me some dollhouse people?” The old man nodded again but this time he looked up at her.
“What do you want?”
“A mother, a daughter, . . . and a father.”

Lacey didn’t mind being an only child — she had lots of cousins and friends to do things with — but it was the lack of a father she really felt. Her aunt had told her the story of how the twenty-six-year-old Maria had become pregnant to her boyfriend, Lacey’s father. She had thought that he loved her but when she told him she was pregnant he had disappeared. Lacey knew there must have been some good reason. He wouldn’t have just left Maria to bring up Lacey by herself without a good reason. And one day he would come back and he would help her with her assignments and teach her how to play cricket and spin her round and round holding onto her feet. He would come back.

Maria was going out with some friends that evening. She was wearing a floaty pale green dress. Lacey watched her pick up her bag and open the door. She looked so happy and beautiful and Lacey suddenly felt left out and sad. Maria was her mother, she should be looking after her. “You’re too old to wear that!”

Lacey went back to the little shop to collect her doll family. When she got home she unwrapped them and looked at them. The mother doll had dark wavy hair and a smiling pretty face. The daughter doll had matching hair and a sweet face but when Lacey glanced at it out of the corner of her eye somehow it looked like her. And the father doll. Tall with wide shoulders and short brown hair. She looked into his face, blue eyes and a large smiling mouth. She could imagine him telling stories or playing frisbee. She put the dolls in the dollhouse, the mother in the kitchen, the father in the study and the daughter in the bedroom. That’s how it was in normal families wasn’t it?

Lacey and her mother fought over dinner. The new house was close to Maria’s work but not close to Lacey’s school. Lacey wanted to catch the ferry, but to get to the ferry wharf she would have to walk through a nasty area that Maria didn’t like. She wanted Lacey to catch the train to school. Lacey snapped and then yelled and then ran upstairs. “You just don’t care about what I want!” she yelled through the door. Maria cried into the washing up. The next day Lacey walked to the ferry.

On the ferry home, Lacey felt bad about fighting with her mother. She saw in her mind her mother’s strained face, the few grey hairs in with the black. She decided to cook a nice dinner for them both. She made their favourite — Spaghetti alla Puttanesca.

Heat 2 tbsp olive oil in a medium saucepan and add 1 small onion, finely chopped; 1 garlic clove, finely chopped and 4 drained canned anchovies. Cook over a low heat, stirring constantly, for 5–7 minutes or until the anchovies break down to form a pulp. Add 1/2 cup sliced pitted black olives and stir-fry for a minute or so. Add 1 400g can chopped tomatoes, 3 tbsp water, some chopped flat leaf parsley and salt and pepper to taste. Stir well and bring to the boil, then lower the heat and cover the pan. Simmer for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally. Stir through cooked drained pasta and top with more parsley. Serves 4.

When the pasta was ready and her mother wasn’t home, Lacey checked the messages on her phone. She had been too busy cooking to check them before. Her mother was working late tonight. She left the pasta and went up to her room. Lacey sat in front of the dollhouse and placed the dolls on chairs around the dining table. She looked at them and could almost feel their happiness and contentment. She imagined that she was the daughter doll sitting there with her mother and father, a completed circle, a real family.

Lacey’s mother had never told her her father’s name. She had always avoided the subject. Lacey asked her again but, “I don’t want to talk about it”. Lacey decided to visit her aunt Anna.

“Auntie, what was my father like?”
“Oh, he was handsome, all the girls envied your mother. Brown hair and the bluest eyes, like the sea. Of course afterwards the girls changed their minds . . .” she trailed off.
“What was his name?”
“Oh, Lacey, I’m not sure if I should tell you these things . . .”
“Please Auntie.”
“His name was Nicholas King. Now help me with lunch, you make the salad.”

Lacey and her mother were getting ready for Christmas in the new apartment. It was not the same, it would never be the same. Lacey fought with her mother over everything, making nasty comments, saying things she knew would hurt her. They would argue, Lacey would snap, Lacey would scream, Lacey would run upstairs and sit in front of the dollhouse, imagining as hard as she could that she was back in her old house on the point with her mother and her father. Maria would cry into the washing up.

One evening after a terrible argument, Lacey screamed “Why does Christmas even matter? There’s only two of us, we’re not even a real family.”

Lacey was going to find her father. Now, before Christmas, she was going to visit him, her father. She needed an address, but she would find it, somehow.

Lacey stood at her mother’s desk. She flipped through the piles of paper, searching. There had to be something to do with her father here. Then she had another idea. She opened the filing cabinet and took out the file labelled ‘Lacey’. She took out each piece of paper one by one. Then she found something that shocked her. A letter from Nicholas King to her mother saying that no he would not give her child support because Lacey was not his child. He denied that Lacey was his daughter. Denied that he was her father. At the top of the letter was an address.

It was Christmas Eve. Lacey stepped out of the train station into the sunlight. She walked past the big, expensive, modern houses. She looked at the slip of paper in her hand. She checked and rechecked it as she stood on the doorstep. She had rung the bell twice before there was any sound from inside the house. Then the door opened and standing beforeher was her father, just like she imagined him. Almost.
“Hi . . . Dad.” She had never used that word to a person before.
“Wha . . .”
“I’m Lacey, your daughter, Maria’s daughter.”
He processed this information slowly, then his handsome face twisted, and when he spoke he almost snarled
“Well, Lacey, I don’t care whose daughter you are, you’re nothing to do with me. Your mother sleeps with so many men you could be anyone’s child. Get out of here, I don’t want anything to do with you.” Lacey saw a blonde woman come down the hall and put her hand on her father’s arm before she turned away. She walked down the steps and back to the train station as if in a trance, unseeing, unfeeling. She got on her train feeling numb.

As Lacey got off the train she passed a young man holding a little girl’s hand. She ran home, tears streaming down her face. Her mother was out. Lacey ran to her room and grabbed the handsome grinning father doll from the dollhouse. She took the doll into the kitchen, grabbed the big kitchen knife and hacked him, her father, into little pieces. Maria found her clutching the knife and sobbing, surrounded by pieces of wood, pieces of her fantasy that her father would come back and make everything better. It was broken, shattered. Maria held her daughter and stroked her hair as if she was a small child. She listened to everything that Lacey had to tell her. Lacey hugged her mother back, this was where she belonged, with her mother who loved her.

The next morning, Christmas morning, Lacey woke up refreshed and happy. She yawned, stretched her arms and wiggled her toes. A complaining meiow brought her attention to the small ginger kitten sitting on the end of the bed. Hearing her daughter’s shrieks of delight, Maria put her head around the door. She stood behind Lacey and smoothed her hair.
“So, are we a real family?”