The Dollhouse

Chapter 1

BEAUTY can be an ugly thing.

As much as we, as human beings, desire the perfection - everything in life is inevitably flawed. Crafted by nurture or nature, from the very shape of our personalities to society as a system.

It wasn't until I met my stepmother that I realized beauty was something people were willing to die for. To kill for. Our family was no exception.

From the view of the neighborhood, the Fitzgerald family lived in a perfect dollhouse. Porcelain and false, with fancy clothes and painted smiles. We were ornaments. Tucked away on the shelf, or on display for the public eye.

But I never liked dolls.

Their straight arms and stiff backs always gave me the creeps. There was something unnatural about their glassy eyes. It reminded me of taxidermy, the stuffed corpses of a body long deceased. But there had never been life behind the mocking smiles of dolls. Strangers always told me they were beautiful - and in the same delusion, they truly thought we were perfect.

Nothing could eradicate the phrase burned into my brain. My stepmother was obsessive.

Image is everything.

But I wasn't a possession. And I certainly wasn't perfect.

That's the trouble with a dollhouse. When you close it all up, there's no way of seeing the silent suffering behind closed doors. 

The spring of 1964 was the first time I saw the Dollhouse.

The scent of pollen was in the air, with bees were lazily hovering over the rose gardens. Every house on the suburban street had an identically trimmed hedge, a row of pickets fences licked with white paint bordering the properties. The whole picture was basked in the golden gift that was the afternoon sun, bouncing off the gleaming surfaces of top-model cars.

All we could do was stare.

It was the beginning of our new life. We had ventured towards the hidden country town of Haverbrook Hollow, Pennsylvania – and this place was to be our new home.

"So, this is it."

Violet didn't sound very impressed.

Daddy's sports car came to a smooth stop in the driveway. His response was simple. "This is it."

Sugar pink and mint green, it was impossible not to stare as you passed. Such colors seemed infantile for such a large, grand house. The shutters and sculpted balconies were painted a fresh white, which only enhanced its peculiar appearance.

Several stories high, the house towered as the highest point in Haverbrook Hollow. Only then, I didn't know how it groaned and creaked in the night. I didn't know that the shadowy trees that surrounded the yard rustled suddenly when the wind passed through them, and some days, I swore I almost heard whispers being carried on the breeze. According to some of the women from town – so ghastly, and gossip-hungry – my stepmother had acquired a fortune after the war.

"It will make a change, but in time you won't ever want to leave. It's a lovely neighborhood."

Violet rolled her large blue eyes, framed by her mascaraed lashes. For two years my senior, my older sister could still be incredibly immature.

Daddy was the first one to begin unloading the car.  The boot had been artfully crammed with as many possessions as we could take, from a record player to my staggering collection of books. I half-expected the luggage to burst open during the journey from the train station.