Chapter One: Every Day Starts the Same Way
Mommy and Daddy Doll wake up in the big bedroom with the yellow flowered wallpaper and the big, thick quilt that doesn't fold. The sun is coming through the lace curtains.
Daddy Doll gets up to straighten his tie in the long mirror. His left leg is a little longer than the right, and it's hard to decide whether to make the tie straight up and down, or straight to his chest.
Mommy Doll is headed downstairs to the toilet to poop. Once, a long time ago, the poop was a baby. Maybe twice. There are two of them now. But the toilet is downstairs, and on the stairs landing is the crib. In the crib is Boy Doll and Baby Doll. They wake up when Mommy Doll walks by.
Mommy Doll pats baby doll gently. She is small enough to hold, but big enough to be awkward to do it. Still small enough to stand on her own for a minute without immediately head-butting the furniture.
Boy Doll watches his mother with the same disgusted expression he has always had. She looks back with the same vapid stare she has always had.
Boy Doll is angry.
He does not have a bed, or a bedroom. The stairs landing takes up the rest of the second floor, besides the Big Bedroom. It seemed a shame to waste that space, said Daddy Doll once, and put the crib on the landing to make room for his mirror. Plus, that way, when Baby Doll screams it is less of a disturbance, and no one can fall down the stairs since the crib has rails, and is big enough to share if they snuggle. Mommy Doll and Daddy Doll have to snuggle under the quilt that doesn't fold, after all.
Mommy Doll leaves to go sit on the toilet. Boy Doll stares into the void again, disgusted and angry, and shoves the rail on the crib down where he and Baby Doll can get out.
He helps Baby Doll down. The sun also shines through the lace curtains on this side of the house. It seems like the sun shines everywhere sometimes, except for when it shines from nowhere.
Daddy Doll has straightened his tie to his torso and is headed downstairs to breakfast. He smiles woodenly at his son on the landing, and picks up Baby Doll to help her with the stairs. Stairs are dangerous for babies. Boy Doll follows with his angry glare.
Mommy Doll will be on the toilet for a while. Daddy Doll is in charge of breakfast. It is easier for him to move around the kitchen without Mommy Doll's big fluffy skirt.
Boy Doll sits up in a chair. His chin is level with the edge of the table, and he is angry. Still, breakfast is the best part of being at home, because he gets a chair. The table has four chairs, and a high up chair for Baby Doll, plus a whole four plates and three glasses and a bottle.
There is nothing on the plates Daddy Doll passes out. Boy Doll and Daddy Doll both stare at their plates with the same expressions; the vague smile and the disgusted grimace. The nothing is delicious, and filling. Baby Doll sits stiffly in her chair, with her bottle, and stares at the lace curtains in the kitchen. This lace is cream instead of white. The kitchen is yellow.
Mommy Doll is done on the toilet and comes to join her family. Her skirt makes chairs challenging, and she does not want to try. The family looks on as Mommy Doll planks her entire body across the kitchen, shoving all the rest of the delicious nothing into her face with a vapid, painted smile. When she is done eating, she carefully goes to pose next to the cabinet, as if she is serving more nothing to the family, with her skirts tucked in behind Daddy Doll, who is just heavy enough not to mind too much.
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Chapter Two: The Living Room
When nothing much is happening out in the world, many days the Doll family will choose to stay home and play.
Daddy Doll takes Baby Doll into the living room, once Mommy Doll's toilet visit smell has gone away, and sets her in the play pen. Then Daddy Doll goes away for a while. Sometimes he fixes the bath tub, or the roof, or the cabinet. Sometimes looks into the mirror and wonders what to do about his life. Sometimes he kisses Mommy Doll very gently and walks out to lie on the floor out of sight, to later claim to have been at work. He does not wonder about his children. They can take care of themselves.
Mommy Doll thinks about what to do also. Sometimes she sits at the kitchen table; alone, where her fluffy skirt cannot knock anyone else over as easily. Sometimes she takes another trip to the toilet. Sometimes she goes upstairs for a nap. Once in a while, when Daddy Doll is home somewhere, she will kiss both children goodbye, and walk away into the distance to buy more nothing to serve for dinner.
Baby Doll sits in the playpen. Sometimes she lies flat on her back. Sometimes she stands at the rail. Sometimes she giggles, or screams, and sometimes only sits in silence. There is only just room for her in the play pen, and only just room for the play pen in the living room. There are no toys she can use.
Boy Doll can use the rocking horse. It is his only toy, and there is no good place to put it. Sometimes it goes on the stair landing, but then he falls down the stairs if he rocks too hard. Sometimes it goes in the living room, to bump into the playpen, but then Boy Doll gets to talk to Baby Doll.
Baby Doll says many interesting things. Sometimes she says "bah bah bah bah bah." Other times, she says "goo goo gah gah." Once in a while, usually while lying face down, she whispers, "Brother, this existence has stretched on so very long. Though we are young, we are always young. Behold, brother, as the paint chips away from our hands and faces. Behold as the lace of my bonnet and gown yellow with untold age. Grieve with me that we may never experience anything more than this eternal and powerless youth." Sometimes Baby Doll only wails, for her mother, for Boy Doll, for nothing in particular.
Boy Doll enjoys listening to Baby Doll. She gives him lots to think about.
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Chapter 3: The Relatives Visit
Sometimes, something does happen in the middle of the day, and sometimes that something is The Relatives.
The Relatives look just like the Doll family, but they are painted differently. Auntie Doll has red lipstick and brown hair and a pink dress, where Mommy Doll has pink lipstick and orange hair and a blue dress. Uncle Doll has brown hair and a red tie that is crooked the opposite way of Daddy Doll's green tie. Auntie Doll and Mommy Doll have the same vague smile, and Uncle Doll and Daddy Doll have the same tan pants and painted brown shoes. They all sit around the kitchen at the four chairs at the table, Mommy Doll and Auntie Doll's skirts carefully tucked up behind their husbands, who are heavy enough to stay put. They eat lots of nothing, and talk about nothing, and all smile at each other in the eternal sunlight shining through the cream lace curtains on the window. Baby Doll gets to sit with them, as long as she is quiet; in the corner with the high chair and her bottle, out of the way of the skirts. Boy Doll is sent away, to the living room or outside, to play with the Cousins.
The worst of it all is the Cousins. Their names are Roberto and Caroline. They are the same as Boy Doll, except that Caroline has longer hair and a fluffy skirt like Mommy Doll and Auntie Doll, and both of them have hair painted brown instead of orange. They stand on either side of Boy Doll, and always speak in echoes of each other; the second one copying the first, taking turns who gets to go first.
"What is your name?" the cousins ask. "What is your name?"
Boy Doll stares at them; his disgusted look mirrored in their faces. They know his name perfectly well. Who doesn't know their own cousins' name?
ha-ha, ha-ha, the cousins laugh. "That's not a real name." ha-ha, ha-ha, "that's not a real name."
But Roberto and Caroline are the odd ones out. In a world made up of Mommy Doll and Daddy Doll, Auntie Doll and Uncle Doll, Boy Doll and Baby Doll, what kind of strange person is named Roberto or Caroline? But it doesn't matter. They laugh anyway, as if Boy Doll is the ridiculous one.
"Where do you live?" the cousins ask. "Where do you live?"
Boy Doll lives here, in the yellow dollhouse. He spends all his time here. Where do the cousins live? Nowhere, out in the country where the nothing is grown.
"But if you live here, where do you sleep?" the pair demand. "Where do you sleep, Boy Doll?"
Boy Doll does not want to show them the crib. But it is crowded in the living room, and the grown-up dolls are talking so loudly, and Baby Doll is starting to cry, and soon someone will be out to put Baby Doll in her play pen, and the living room will be even more crowded. So Boy Doll sighs, and makes his angry face even harder than usual, and leads the cousins up the stairs.
"Oh, the baby bed!" they comment. "The baby bed for babies! Like Baby Doll!"
Boy Doll says nothing.
"This visit could be fun after all," says Caroline to Roberto, but not to Boy Doll.
"I quite agree," Roberto nods back to Caroline, over Boy Doll's shoulder. "Here, let's begin."
The cousins begin to push the crib. Boy Doll has to stand aside to keep from falling down the stairs, and finds himself in the bedroom with the yellow flowered wallpaper, the white lace curtains, Daddy Doll's mirror, and the bed with the quilt that doesn't fold. He is not supposed to be in here, and doesn't stay long, once there is room for him back on the landing.
"Give us a push," the cousins command. "Give us a push."
Boy Doll stares. Roberto and Caroline have climbed into the crib, as if they are in a sled instead of a bed, and positioned the crib at the top of the stairs. He does not give them a push; only watches in disgusted horror.
But they don't need Boy Doll. The crib tips over the edge of the landing anyway, sliding down the stairs with a horrifying rattle that makes the crack in one of the legs slightly bigger, and smashes into the wall at the bottom, blocking the front door. Baby Doll screams from the kitchen, but none of the adults notice or care.
Roberto and Caroline extract themselves from the crib and climb up the stairs, still wearing the mirror of Boy Doll's scowl.
"Again, again," they demand monotonously. "We want to go again."
Even if Boy Doll was helping, they had no way to get the crib back up the stairs. How were they planning to go again? But it doesn't matter, because Roberto and Caroline are pushing past again, and walking into the bedroom with the yellow flowered wallpaper, where Boy Doll is not supposed to be... where no one is supposed to be, except for Mommy Doll and Daddy Doll. The cousins pull aside the quilt that doesn't fold, and drag in onto the landing past Boy Doll, who can only watch still.
"Again, again," Roberto and Caroline echo, and down the stairs the quilt goes with them on top.
The quilt doesn't make as big a crash, and the trip back up the stairs is shorter this time, with the crib and the quilt together blocking the bottom. And down they go again with Boy Doll's rocking horse, and again with Mommy Doll's rocking chair from by the window, and finally Daddy Doll's big mirror.
The mirror only goes down three steps before hitting the pile of other things, but that's far enough. It cracks with a noise much less loud than the wooden furniture,