My mother kept the dollhouse in the divorce. My father had built it, in his woodshop in the basement, crafting the tiny staircases with delicate detail, making miniature faces out of stubby beige blobs.
He’d wanted it, the dollhouse, to stay where it was, for me to play with when I came to visit. I liked the way that he often hid surprises in there, some new piece of furniture that he’d created, like a tiny piano in the sitting room, or a stack of books for the little girl doll’s nightstand. It made it feel like they were real, the little wooden family, and that they were, in their daily lives, adding to their home just like real people did.
As for my mother, she collected lamps. Similar to the dollhouse, it seemed everyday I came home to a new lamp. They stood there, on the fireplace mantel (tiny lamps, with miniature shades), on the end tables (stained glass lamps, antiques), even cluttering up the kitchen table (lamps that looked like candles, with their glass flames) to the point where we had to start eating dinner on the living room couch.
“Pack it up,” my mother said to the movers, pointing to the dollhouse. “But be careful. It’s a one-of-a-kind piece.”
The way she said it, said “one-of-a-kind,” convinced me that, even after everything that had happened, she still loved my father.
But what did I know?
I was only eight, after all.
I had already packed up the interior of the dollhouse, as my mother packed up our lives, unstitched us from the world we had with my father. I wrapped the little dishes and the little furniture and the little people in tissue paper before I packed them, assuring them that this was not a coffin—I would see them soon. I left behind the little girl doll, fashioned in my likeness, with her painted green eyes and black yarn hair. I sat her on the windowsill so that she could watch for when we came back, so that she could tell my father that we had come home.
My mother fought about that dollhouse. I didn’t understand why—it was my dollhouse. Shouldn’t I get to decide where it lived? Maybe it was because we were leaving the house, not my father. We had to make a new home, not my father.
“I’ll build you another one,” my father had said when he lost the fight. “So that you can have one to play with here.”
He used to say that nothing made him happier than to see me play with my dollhouse—he said, love, maybe I can’t give you everything you’ll ever want, but whatever I can give you, whatever my hands can create for you, you’ll have.
I couldn’t imagine that he could make another one—not one with so many intricacies and details as my dollhouse.
But I left the little girl, just in case.
My father never carved lamps for the dollhouse. I wondered if it was because he didn’t want to look at any more lamps. I wondered how my dolls felt, in their darkness.
My mother remarried, a man who owned a cat that scratched my dollhouse, long claw marks in the side of the house, as if some terrible monster had tried to attack. I told my father. He looked surprised.
“I didn’t think you even played with your dollhouse anymore,” he said. And I knew that I was too old then to play with my dolls, but I wasn’t too old to love the dollhouse, was I? Too old to look in and marvel at their lives, at the way that little wooden pieces seem to strategically move, like chess pieces.
I wondered then, after the incident with my cat-stepbrother if my father ever found the little girl doll that I had left on the windowsill. She disappeared one day, I guess. When I came over to spend the weekend, she no longer sat there, her little jointed wooden legs hanging over the sill. But I didn’t ask and he didn’t offer up the information. He never remarried and he never made me a second dollhouse.
“Do you want to donate that to the children’s hospital?” my mother asked, before I left for college. “It might be nice.”
It surprised me that, after fighting so hard to keep the dollhouse in the divorce, she was willing to give it up. I dated a guy in college who studied psychology and he speculated that the fight hadn’t been about the dollhouse at all, but rather about me.
I broke up with him. I don’t like being analyzed.
I didn’t give the dollhouse away. I told my mother that if she was sick of seeing it in my bedroom, I could bring it over to my father’s. He had filled his house with custom furniture, crowding the upstairs rooms with ornate armchairs, sleek bookcases, elegant vanities. People came over often, as if the house was a showroom, pointing and saying, yes, yes, I’ll take one of those.
I took it with me when I moved out for good, after college. When I go back to visit my mother, she shuts the door to my old room, says that it’s too messy, that she hasn’t had the chance to clean up. I peak in. It’s crowded with lamps. It’s piled high to the ceiling with lamps. A layer of glass, a tangle of wires. It looks like she’s just been throwing the lamps in my old room, with reckless abandon.
My father got a big job, furnishing the house of a celebrity who wanted custom pieces. He smiled a lot. He seemed happy. He said that he wanted me to have a baby so that he could spoil a grandchild.
I always wondered what my stepfather thought of the lamps. They seemed to amuse him, their accumulation into a rapidly crowding house. I often found him, just after dusk, standing in the living room and flicking them on and off, on and off.
“Isn’t it remarkable,” he’d say, flicking on and off, on and off, “electricity?”
In a way, I suppose it was. The girl next door has a dollhouse; I saw it when I went over to have tea with her mother. It’s extravagant, but plastic, with a pulley elevator to the second floor, and real, working lights. Even a piano that plays a little tune when you press it. I wondered, where was the imagination in that? What about the whistling that my father used to do when I pretended to have the daddy doll play the wooden piano? The little Swan Lake tunes he remembered from his sister, the ballerina.
My mother, in her old age, took up smoking in the dark. She sits there—I’ve seen her do it—in the dining room, lamps off, ashes falling on her lap.
When my father was in the hospital, dying, he confided in me that he’d seen the little girl doll after all. He’d looked at it often, kept it in his nightstand. He’d understood why I’d left it. And just before he’d died he’d handed it to me, unearthed from the pocket of the worn robe that the doctors had been reluctant, for some reason, to let him wear, and told me to go home.
He’d wanted it, the dollhouse, to stay where it was, for me to play with when I came to visit. I liked the way that he often hid surprises in there, some new piece of furniture that he’d created, like a tiny piano in the sitting room, or a stack of books for the little girl doll’s nightstand. It made it feel like they were real, the little wooden family, and that they were, in their daily lives, adding to their home just like real people did.
As for my mother, she collected lamps. Similar to the dollhouse, it seemed everyday I came home to a new lamp. They stood there, on the fireplace mantel (tiny lamps, with miniature shades), on the end tables (stained glass lamps, antiques), even cluttering up the kitchen table (lamps that looked like candles, with their glass flames) to the point where we had to start eating dinner on the living room couch.
“Pack it up,” my mother said to the movers, pointing to the dollhouse. “But be careful. It’s a one-of-a-kind piece.”
The way she said it, said “one-of-a-kind,” convinced me that, even after everything that had happened, she still loved my father.
But what did I know?
I was only eight, after all.
I had already packed up the interior of the dollhouse, as my mother packed up our lives, unstitched us from the world we had with my father. I wrapped the little dishes and the little furniture and the little people in tissue paper before I packed them, assuring them that this was not a coffin—I would see them soon. I left behind the little girl doll, fashioned in my likeness, with her painted green eyes and black yarn hair. I sat her on the windowsill so that she could watch for when we came back, so that she could tell my father that we had come home.
My mother fought about that dollhouse. I didn’t understand why—it was my dollhouse. Shouldn’t I get to decide where it lived? Maybe it was because we were leaving the house, not my father. We had to make a new home, not my father.
“I’ll build you another one,” my father had said when he lost the fight. “So that you can have one to play with here.”
He used to say that nothing made him happier than to see me play with my dollhouse—he said, love, maybe I can’t give you everything you’ll ever want, but whatever I can give you, whatever my hands can create for you, you’ll have.
I couldn’t imagine that he could make another one—not one with so many intricacies and details as my dollhouse.
But I left the little girl, just in case.
My father never carved lamps for the dollhouse. I wondered if it was because he didn’t want to look at any more lamps. I wondered how my dolls felt, in their darkness.
My mother remarried, a man who owned a cat that scratched my dollhouse, long claw marks in the side of the house, as if some terrible monster had tried to attack. I told my father. He looked surprised.
“I didn’t think you even played with your dollhouse anymore,” he said. And I knew that I was too old then to play with my dolls, but I wasn’t too old to love the dollhouse, was I? Too old to look in and marvel at their lives, at the way that little wooden pieces seem to strategically move, like chess pieces.
I wondered then, after the incident with my cat-stepbrother if my father ever found the little girl doll that I had left on the windowsill. She disappeared one day, I guess. When I came over to spend the weekend, she no longer sat there, her little jointed wooden legs hanging over the sill. But I didn’t ask and he didn’t offer up the information. He never remarried and he never made me a second dollhouse.
“Do you want to donate that to the children’s hospital?” my mother asked, before I left for college. “It might be nice.”
It surprised me that, after fighting so hard to keep the dollhouse in the divorce, she was willing to give it up. I dated a guy in college who studied psychology and he speculated that the fight hadn’t been about the dollhouse at all, but rather about me.
I broke up with him. I don’t like being analyzed.
I didn’t give the dollhouse away. I told my mother that if she was sick of seeing it in my bedroom, I could bring it over to my father’s. He had filled his house with custom furniture, crowding the upstairs rooms with ornate armchairs, sleek bookcases, elegant vanities. People came over often, as if the house was a showroom, pointing and saying, yes, yes, I’ll take one of those.
I took it with me when I moved out for good, after college. When I go back to visit my mother, she shuts the door to my old room, says that it’s too messy, that she hasn’t had the chance to clean up. I peak in. It’s crowded with lamps. It’s piled high to the ceiling with lamps. A layer of glass, a tangle of wires. It looks like she’s just been throwing the lamps in my old room, with reckless abandon.
My father got a big job, furnishing the house of a celebrity who wanted custom pieces. He smiled a lot. He seemed happy. He said that he wanted me to have a baby so that he could spoil a grandchild.
I always wondered what my stepfather thought of the lamps. They seemed to amuse him, their accumulation into a rapidly crowding house. I often found him, just after dusk, standing in the living room and flicking them on and off, on and off.
“Isn’t it remarkable,” he’d say, flicking on and off, on and off, “electricity?”
In a way, I suppose it was. The girl next door has a dollhouse; I saw it when I went over to have tea with her mother. It’s extravagant, but plastic, with a pulley elevator to the second floor, and real, working lights. Even a piano that plays a little tune when you press it. I wondered, where was the imagination in that? What about the whistling that my father used to do when I pretended to have the daddy doll play the wooden piano? The little Swan Lake tunes he remembered from his sister, the ballerina.
My mother, in her old age, took up smoking in the dark. She sits there—I’ve seen her do it—in the dining room, lamps off, ashes falling on her lap.
When my father was in the hospital, dying, he confided in me that he’d seen the little girl doll after all. He’d looked at it often, kept it in his nightstand. He’d understood why I’d left it. And just before he’d died he’d handed it to me, unearthed from the pocket of the worn robe that the doctors had been reluctant, for some reason, to let him wear, and told me to go home.
