“Wh-what?” Vicky said. “What do you mean?” She could not take her eyes from the doll’s face. It seemed impossible that a voice could come from that painted mask. But it did come, quiet and dark and cold.
“You shall see,” she said. “Come with me to the dining room.”
Vicky followed her through the doorway to the stairway in the center of the house. She had never noticed how steep it was; it was very dark, and the going was difficult. She hardly dared to think what would happen if she should slip and bump against the aunt, who was bobbing stiffly down just ahead of her.
From the third floor they descended past the living room and the conservatory, with its potted palms, on the second. Down another flight of stairs
they came to the dining room, which shared the first floor with the kitchen.
She expected to see all the dolls sitting around the table. Then she remembered that she had put the father in his bedroom (he was probably still lying on the bed and crying), and shut the daughter up in hers. The aunt stepped through the dining room doorway ahead of her, then turned back, and with her hard wooden hand on Vicky’s neck, pushed her into the room. “Look who we have here,” she said.
The mother sat at one end of the long table. Her hair was in its usual disarray, the pinkish-blonde curls floating stiffly around her cherubic face with its little red dot of a mouth, round cheeks, and innocent blue eyes. Beside her sat the brother, staring down at his plate.
“Well!” said the mother doll, and hid her face for a moment, giggling. A few strands of her quivering hair fell down onto her plate. “Well!” she repeated, looking up again. “Don’t just stand there staring at me like an imbecile! Sit down, sit down!” Her voice was piercing and quick, like a record played too fast. “Dandaroo! Arrange a chair for our guest.”
Silently, still not looking up, the brother rose and pulled out the chair beside him. The painted features on his flat plastic face were already beginning to fade from the repeated rough washings administered
by the aunt, giving him a curiously noseless appearance. His head was as large as his torso, and his short, plump legs had no knees. Uncomfortably, Vicky sat down. The mother’s behavior was disturbing; and her strident, harsh manner was made all the more eerie by her unchanging expression of angelic idiocy.
“You sit down too, Diadama,” she squealed at the aunt. “We have lots and lots to talk about. You know we do.
“Now,” said the mother, turning back to Vicky, “I would offer you something to eat but of course there isn’t anything, except that revolting plaster turkey that’s been sitting in the middle of the table for years. You may have some of that if you’d like.”
“Er, no thank you,” Vicky said timidly.
“No, of course there isn’t anything to eat,” the mother went on as if she hadn’t heard her, “because you know as well as I do that dolls can’t eat. Yet day after day here we sit in front of these empty plates, staring at that beastly turkey and bickering with each other, endlessly bickering. And why? I’ll tell you why, my dear little girl. Because you make us!”
“I—”said Vicky.
“Do not interrupt, child,” said the aunt in her cold voice. “Remember, you are small and helpless now.”
“But—” said Vicky.
“Not to mention all the other things you make us do,” the mother continued. “The way we have to lie in those beds for endless hours every night. The way we have to stand in that meaningless kitchen, cooking with empty pots. And the way you make us fight all the time, and lock each other in our rooms. Not that I haven’t begun to enjoy—” Suddenly she looked toward the door. “Why, Quimbee,” she said. “Tired of sulking? Then come in and sit down. Look who’s here.”
Naturally she wouldn’t have heard the father doll coming downstairs, Vicky realized as he sat down meekly beside the mother. Unlike the aunt and the mother, who were wooden, or the plastic son, the father doll was soft. His arms and legs were nothing but pipe cleaners; his head and body simply wads of cotton with cloth wrapped tightly around them. His face was stitched with thread—the prim pink line of his mouth, the thin black mustache, the vacant brown knots that were his eyes. He wore a black suit, and nothing protruded from the ends of his tubular sleeves and trousers, for they had been made just long enough to conceal the fact that he had no hands or feet.
“Now!” said the mother. “If only Ganglia would come down out of her room we’d all be here for this momentous occasion.”
“G-Ganglia?” said Vicky, horrified. “That isn’t the sister’s name, is it? It couldn’t be!”
“And why not!” snapped the mother. “You never bothered to give us names. We had to do it ourselves. And Ganglia,” she went on, snickering, “suits her personality perfectly.”
“It does not!” shrieked a voice from the doorway. “Not one bit! Your name should be Ganglia.”
“Do not speak that way to your mother,” said the aunt.
“You can’t tell me what to do, you old goat. I’ll talk any way I want,” said the sister doll as she flounced into the room. Flouncing came easily to her, for she was made of rubber and could move her arms and legs in any direction. Vicky had spent hours putting her through grotesque contortions, leaving her tied up in knots for days at a time, lying helplessly in the middle of the dining room table while the others stared at her placidly over empty teacups.
“Look who’s here,” said the mother.
“I know,” Ganglia said, plopping down at the table. She turned to look at Vicky, her one eye glittering. (The other had fallen out weeks ago.) Over the years, the cracks covering her face had filled with black grime; and now they twisted into a kind of smile. “Yes, I know who she is all right.”
“She is powerless now,” said the aunt.
“Exactly,” the mother said. “Very well put, Diadama.”
They were all staring at her except the brother, who was still looking at his plate. “But I don’t understand,” said Vicky, growing more and more uneasy as she looked from one malevolent gaze to another. “I didn’t think you were like … like this. Why are you looking at me so strangely?”
“You should understand,” said the aunt. “It is you, after all, who has made us what we are.”