Mallory trudged through frost-bitten grass, the yard sign’s annual juniper garland dangling in her arms. It was the first of December, known to her alone as Decorating Day. Mallory always dressed the yard first, the dreamy twinkle in the front yard always inspired her to believe that the lonely house was worthy of some trimmings too. The house looked onto Adams Street, once a quiet road with a few little houses built around the turn of the century. Now it was a four-lane highway prone to rush-hour congestion. Commercial real estate had replaced many of the old single-family homes. At only three in the afternoon, traffic from the intersection was already suffocating the house.
The sign at the front of the yard was perpendicular to the road, a few feet behind a row of limestone garden statues that guarded the property. They looked out at the street, a one-time sanctuary where Mallory’s brother, Jamie, would play baseball with the Jensen boys across the way, only dispersing when one of them yelled, “Car!” The Jensen home had been replaced by a Blockbuster Video ten years ago, and Mallory’s brother had moved to the northern suburbs with his wife. Only she remained on Adams Street.
The sign was white oak and trimmed the same pastel pink as the house. Mallory tucked the garland around the signposts, draping it neatly along the curve of the sign. In the middle of the sign was a thick scarlet cross, and above it, in close black letters, were the words “Doll Hospital.” Yesterday a client, some sort of marketer, had told her to put her name on the sign. Standing there, Mallory was even less sold on the idea than she had been yesterday. It felt a little tacky to credit herself publicly. Mallory had no interest in broadcasting her existence.
“What do you think?” Mallory asked her statues. “Should I add a wreath?” She cocked her head, estimating how much of the sign would be blocked out by a ten-inches of holly berries. Deciding it would feel cluttered, Mallory retreated toward the house. She zigzagged around ice patches and the little statues that dotted the lawn. Mallory paused for a second, imagining the little stone creatures glittering with lights. She collected figures —gnomes and fairies, angels and saints — to comfort herself and populate her life with personalities and characters. Their presence, however, did tend to generate an undesirable curiosity in the Doll Hospital. Mallory knew that the remaining neighbors whispered about her eccentricity, which was glaringly conspicuous in the homogeneous suburb. Mallory would have rather remained unseen and undiscussed.
The garage, a small structure painted the same pink, was tucked behind the house away from the street. Mallory’s narrow driveway was slippery with ice, so she padded carefully along the edge of the lawn. At forty-three, Mallory wasn’t old but she wasn’t nimble either. She ate sparingly and got most of her exercise by lifting toys onto their shelves. These days her patients were mostly American Girl Dolls, a seemingly endless rotation of Samantha, Addie, and Felicity with loose arms and wobbly heads. The Doll Hospital was only thirty miles from The American Girl Place on Michigan Avenue, so parents often flocked to her little home business with their children’s broken dolls to avoid the corporate prices in the city. Mallory missed the days of artistry that she used to disdain, painting on faded porcelain faces, reanimating dolls wiped clean with age. Now she felt like a factory worker, reassembling the same doll from the same parts again and again.
Mallory used the garage for storage, spare doll limbs, and holiday decorations. She only drove her wood-paneled station wagon to get groceries and supplies for the business, otherwise, she mostly stayed home. She keyed open her garage and hoisted the door upward so that it lay flat along the ceiling. A large, green plastic bin in the corner overflowed with Christmas lights, and she began to rummage through the strings, searching for one without missing bulbs. The colored lights were her favorite. She’d watch from her bedroom window on the second floor as they lit up the house like an arcade game. Mallory, wary of the attention she was already receiving, pulled out the uniform yellow-white lights instead.
As Mallory wrapped the string around her wrist, car wheels crunched over the icy drive. A mauve minivan pulled up to the house, parking near the front walk. Mallory tiptoed out onto the slippery pavement. The Doll Hospital was open between eight in the morning and six in the evening for drop-offs, but people usually called or emailed to let her know how their doll was suffering, if only to ensure she could fix them before driving out. Unexpected drop-offs made Mallory a bit skittish because she usually needed a moment to emotionally prepare herself before meeting a client for the first time.
Even the most basic small talk debilitated her. Sometimes, when a client came with a new drop-off, she’d start talking to the doll instead of the customer. A woman once asked her if this was part of the gimmick, an act to match the exam table and the doctor’s coat she kept at the back of the store. Others would draw in their breath and hurriedly push the doll toward her, assuming Mallory was insane. Neither was the truth; Mallory simply preferred to project a personality onto a tiny plastic person than navigate the demands of a real one.
Mallory began planning how she might address the doll until she noticed the man climbing out of the minivan. He was tall and broad-shouldered, his honey-brown hair cropped close and graying at the roots. In one hand he held an American Girl Doll. When he turned to Mallory, a smile spread across his face.
“Hey, Mal,” he said, “You available for a little surgery?”
Mallory’s body knew who he was before she did. Her muscles relaxed and her heart began to sing.
Though she knew, she asked, “Charlie?”
* * *
When Mallory arrived home from school, her mother was in the nursery. Mallory’s father had died almost two years before, on a rainy day in June, a few hours after completing construction on a nursery for the hospital, finished with little plastic bassinets and a thin sheet of glass separating new owners from the baby dolls. Jane, Mallory’s mother, took great care in curating the nursery, filling it with new arrivals, and taping little birth announcements to their bassinets. Fierce December wind whipped into the house behind Mallory. She slammed the door, snot slipping down from her nose to her lips.
“Mom?” Mallory began.
Jane looked up from dressing a blue-eyed baby doll in a ruffled bonnet. Her mother wore little glasses and a doctor’s coat. She examined Mallory’s cheeks, salty with tears.
“What’s the matter, Mal?” Jane cooed. “It’s Decorating Day.” She set the baby doll in a bassinet labeled ‘Angela.’ Jane only allowed adoptions on the weekends. Families would dress in hospital robes while Jane examined the ears, nose, and throat of the new babies. Mallory would begrudgingly act as the nurse, dressed in a World War II-style apron with a crimson cross across her chest. Mallory was relieved that it was Monday, a day for stitching and styling, so no one would see the trails of heartbreak running down her face.
“Is Charlie coming over?” Jane asked. Decorating Day required a great deal of lifting and unstacking, activities that Mallory knew her mother believed to be best suited to men. With Jamie studying in Champaign, Mallory knew Jane had hoped the youngest Jensen, Charlie, would join them this afternoon to pull the decorations down out of the attic. Mallory and Charlie were in the same class at school and had been largely inseparable as children. When Mallory had passed Charlie in the hall that day after the third period, he had barely looked at her. Mallory pretended not to care that her oddities and awkwardness had finally made her insignificant to him.
Mallory wiped her nose with the edge of her winter coat and hid her face from her mother. She licked her swollen lips and pulled them into her mouth. They were warm and sour.
“Charlie’s going to the Winter Dance with Mary Anne Reid,” Mallory said. “They’re dating now.” Mary Ann Reid was on the dance team, the more sophisticated alternative to cheerleading, which made it significantly more difficult for Mallory to dismiss her as vapid. With shiny blonde hair and perfect white teeth, Mary Ann was practically Marcia Brady. Mallory, in comparison, resembled one of the dolls, wide-eyed and innocent with porcelain skin, perpetually styled in collared dresses made by her mother.
Mallory turned her swollen eyes back to the nursery. Jane seemed not to notice her daughter’s puffy eyes.
“Well, can he still come over to help with the boxes in the attic?” Jane asked, giving her a firm look before returning to the new arrivals.
Mallory couldn’t explain to her mother that while Charlie would certainly come over and lift boxes for them, she didn’t want to see him now. By next September, Charlie, a star student, would likely be off at Northwestern, and Mallory might never see him again. For the next few months, Mallory would have to change her hallway routes to avoid Charlie’s locker and walk home from high school instead of catching a ride with him. Mallory ran up the stairs to their living space on the second floor, pausing in front of the attic latch that hung above the last step. A short rope dangled from the ceiling. Mallory pulled it, releasing a small, suspended ladder. Mallory hoisted herself upward, into the musty darkness, determined to disguise her anguish with industriousness.
* * *
“It’s Kit Kittredge,” Charlie said, handing her the yellow-haired doll. “I got her for my daughter’s birthday back in June, and she’s already gotten a bit too much love.”
“Hi, Kit,” Mallory mumbled softly, lifting the doll by the armpits.
Kit’s left leg was drooping out of its socket. The string that connected the limb to the body was slack and fraying. Mallory could see instantly that American Girl had begun using a different type of string; it was poor quality and not excess love that had brought Kit to the hospital. No one ever referred to broken people as being too loved; if a human being needed fixing, it was assumed that they had been loved rather poorly.
“Alright, Kit,” Mallory said. “Let’s get those patient admission forms filled out.” Mallory hurried up the front path, dodging ice and carefully supporting Kit’s leg, the string of lights slapping against her coat as she walked.
Mallory carried Kit to the waiting room, a yellow wallpapered space where recently admitted dolls awaited examination in individual white cubbies. Inside each cubby was a hospital bed made out of a thin blush cushion. Mallory pulled paperwork out of the drawer of a narrow desk and handed it to Charlie without meeting his eye. From the drawer above the first, Mallory drew a roll of hospital bands and quickly scrawled “Kit Kittredge Jensen” on the narrow line below the date.
“We might have to keep you here for a couple of weeks, Kit,” Mallory told the doll, scouring the cubbies for an empty bed.
“That’s okay,” Charlie said. “Do you think we’ll have her in time for Christmas?”
“Kit, you’ll be there on Christmas morning to meet all of your new friends,” Mallory cooed, soothing Kit’s hair and tucking her into the nearest available cubby. Mallory’s limbs were shaking badly with nerves, so she busied herself by situating Kit and checking on the dolls around her, as if to make sure they were comfortable.
Charlie cleared his throat. “So how have you been?” he said, handing over the admittance forms.
Mallory shrugged, looking down into the winter coat she was still wearing as if his voice had emerged from her pocket. She couldn’t bear to look at Charlie, knowing that his natural charisma might unpack something that she’d long ago stowed away. Worse, Charlie’s charm might fail to simply delight her, confirming Mallory’s fear that she was no longer capable of desire.
“The hospital hasn’t changed a bit,” Charlie observed, ambling over to the nursery case, examining the colorful baby block letters glued above the glass.
“I don’t dress up in the old costume anymore if that’s what you’re wondering,” Mallory said to him, finally, looking at the floor.
“But there’s a new costume?” Charlie jested.
Mallory felt a tug at the corner of her mouth but tucked in her growing smile. Sheepishly, she opened her coat to reveal her soft pink scrubs. There was a tag pinned on the left side of her chest that read ‘Dr. Mallory Winkle, DDM’ in blue type.
“I didn’t know you could get a doctorate in doll making,” Charlie quipped as Mallory hid her badge back into her coat.
“Don’t be smart,” Mallory said, raising her gaze to his eyes. To her great relief and horror, Mallory felt the smallest flutter of hope tickling her stomach.
“Never,” Charlie smiled. He looked around the room, eyes glazing over the nursery, the display in the front with the German china dolls, the baskets full of Raggedy Anns and Cabbage Patch Kids. Mallory noticed the foregone look of nostalgia in his smile.
“I heard about your mom,” Charlie said. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine. It’s been years now.”
“You must be lonely,” Charlie observed, giving her a sidewise, pitying look.
“Well, I have the dolls,” Mallory said sardonically.
* * *
On a damp June day, Mallory packed up her mother’s station wagon with miniature surgical supplies and a small Samsonite suitcase filled with personal items. That Mallory had more doll-making tools than personal effects increasingly bothered her; based on where she was headed, the unsettling imbalance was almost guaranteed to grow. Rainwater from earlier that morning dripped off the edge of the back hatch onto her strappy, yellow sundress. A quiet mist fell from the sky, and the humidity stuck to her skin. Mallory found damp clothes unbearable but didn’t have a change of clothes that wasn’t already packed. Mallory was always a little bit uncomfortable, even when she was alone, so deeply attuned was she to the not-quite-right bits of life, especially the bits inside of her. Mallory sighed, ill at ease, knowing she would just have to tough it out in a wet dress for the seven-hour drive.
It was always assumed, at least by Jane, that Mallory would take over the business. At her own insistence, Mallory got an associate’s degree in administration at the community college, desperate to learn something more practical. The day Mallory finished, Jane signed her up for classes with the Doll Artisan Guild. Jane had taught Mallory here and there over the years — how to paint eyebrows or re-secure eyelashes — but Jane wanted Mallory to have a formal education and argued that the growing popularity of the nursery made it impossible for her to be Mallory’s instructor.
Mallory had heard about Agnes, the doll-making master of the Midwest, from her mother’s stories. Agnes had been a second mother to Jane when her mother couldn’t be one. As a teenager, Jane had lost her mother’s guiding hand to schizophrenia, which had hit her hard during menopause. For comfort, Jane kept after her dolls from childhood, sleeping with a favorite, a rag doll named Sue Mae, into adulthood. At twenty, Jane, not yet married, was without work and struggled to help her father care for the family. Jane read in the local paper that a woman one town over was a certified doll-making instructor and rang her the next day.
Jane described Agnes as plumb, warm and big-hearted, but also had told Mallory about repairing porcelain Victorians until four in the morning with only the sound of Agnes’s metronome to keep her awake. Mallory’s stomach dropped at the thought of being all alone with Agnes and her dolls for the next six months, painting with tiny brushes as the metronome kept time of her movements. Mallory had no alternative to following her mother’s wishes for her education because she hadn’t had much opportunity to develop wishes of her own.
Mallory pulled her long, strawberry hair up into a ponytail and took one last look at the house with its fading white shutters and its loose-shingled roof. Behind her, the tires crunched against the gravel drive. A Dodge pick-up stopped behind the station wagon, and Charlie hopped out of the driver’s seat. He hesitated, hanging onto the pick-up’s door for a moment like he wasn’t quite sure he should be there. He looked Mallory up and down.
“That’s a terrible goodbye dress,” Charlie said, slamming the door shut.
“Geez, thanks,” Mallory snapped.
“If people see you in that, they’re going to wish you were staying,” Charlie said.
Mallory swallowed, her heart quickening as he strode toward her, his work boots kicking up gravel. Charlie and his brothers had started a landscaping business for the summer, and Charlie was slick with sweat and rain from his morning job. Mallory savored his smell, and let it fill her with soft yearning.
“So, you’re off,” Charlie said like he was a little disappointed. This surprised Mallory, who hadn’t properly been friends with Charlie since he started dating Mary Anne during senior year of high school. Mallory’s mother said it was because Mary Anne would be jealous of her lifelong friendship with Charlie. Mallory knew it was because she was jealous of Mary Anne’s ability to have Charlie fall in love with her. Charlie leaned against the station wagon and peered through the window.
“Yeah, all the way to Omaha,” Mallory said, playing with the door handle. She felt her face flush and pressed her clammy cheeks against them to level herself back out.
“You’ve got a lot of doll corpses in there,” Charlie commented, wiping off the rain with his sleeve.
“Easier to operate on if they’re already dead,” Mallory said, a smile spreading on her face. She leaned against the station wagon too, a polite distance away from him.
“Who knew Adams Street had its own Frankenstein? Don’t forget about me when you’re famous,” Charlie jested, gently kicking a piece of gravel toward her.
“A famous doll maker?” Mallory laughed. “It’s more likely that my creations will come to life and hunt me down.”
“Don’t they already?” Charlie said, nudging her a bit.
When they were young, Charlie and Mallory used to sit in the hospital and tell scary stories about the dolls. There was one doll named Maurice, a leering clown, white-headed and red-cheeked, that Mallory swore moved around in the dark. On summer nights, Charlie and Mallory would camp out in front of the shop, next to the shelves filled with antique toys, and try to catch him in the act. Once, a box on the shelf above Maurice slipped off the edge, and the poor little clown tumbled along with it, scaring Mallory so badly that she cried for half an hour. Charlie comforted her the whole time, patting down her hair and making jokes about Maurice breaking his back and retiring from the circus.
“Did you hear that my mom sold Maurice?” Mallory asked, reminding him of their idyllic shared childhood.
“Seriously? I thought he was her favorite?” Charlie said with the curious excitement of a child.
“Dad bought the doll for her when they were courting at an antique show. He was amazed that he found something from 1905 until Mom told him she had a doll from 1855.”
“Still her favorite though,” Charlie confirmed.
“Well,” Mallory said, “She loved my dad more than the dolls, so anything he found for her she loved twice as much.”
“Love is funny,” Charlie smiled. There was a bit of dirt above Charlie’s eye that Mallory longed to brush away.
“Mal?” Charlie began, extending a hand, stepping toward her a bit. He took one of her long curls and wrapped it around a finger.
“Charlie,” Mallory said, stepping toward him. Instinct, for maybe the first time, allowed her to wipe his forehead. She let her fingers linger on his cheek.
“If this old lady has any creepy clowns, send me a picture,” Charlie said softly. Mallory smiled, warmth returning to her cheeks.
“I won’t be gone that long, you know,” Mallory said.
“I don’t know about that. Some guy might charm you with an antique doll, and you’ll never come back,” Charlie said, pulling away and uncoiling the hair from his finger.
“I don’t love dolls that much, so I’m not sure that would work,” Mallory said.
“Really?” Charlie asked, a bit surprised as if he didn’t know how stifled Mallory felt by the omnipresent porcelain-faced figures. Maybe Charlie thought time had changed her, but Mallory felt perpetually, infuriatingly unchangeable.
“It’s the family business,” Mallory shrugged.
“So what do you love then?” Charlie said, so quietly she couldn’t be sure if he was making conversation or baiting her.
She couldn’t bring herself to answer, so she just let her truth hang between her teeth. Charlie turned back to his truck, standing on the step next to the driver-side door. He waited for a moment, but when she didn’t answer, he opened the door and stepped inside. Mallory felt the rain return, falling, slow and heavy on her back.
“I guess you’ll find out,” Charlie said, playful and carefree once again. “Send some doll pictures. Mary Anne and I like to scare each other, and she won’t see it coming.”
Mallory deflated a bit. She realized that her cowardice hadn’t lost her this beautiful moment, but hundreds of them over the years. Not only had Mallory not spoken this truth, but she never believed in its reciprocity, in part because she had long ago begun to believe that she was quite simply undeserving. Part of Mallory had always hoped that Charlie would see beyond her insecurity, to the tiny part of her that didn’t quite believe in her unworthiness. With a wink, Charlie got in his car and backed out, bits of gravel kicking up under the tires.
* * *
“Who does Kit belong to?” Mallory said, willing herself to look straight at him.
“My daughter, Jessica,” Charlie said, flipping through a slim leather wallet. Charlie handed her a credit card, but she waved it away.
“What, no exam fee?” Charlie asked.
“Not for friends,” Mallory said, immediately regretting her words. “I meant old friends.”
“We’re friends, Mal,” Charlie said, quietly putting his credit card away.
“I hardly know you now,” Mallory muttered, pretending to glance over the admittance form, studying Charlie from the corner of her eye. He was wearing a neat, cream Aran sweater under a gray coat. A watch peeked out under his left sleeve. It wasn’t showy, but Mallory could tell it had been expensive.
“It’s been a while,” Charlie said. “I’m sure you heard I got divorced.”
Mallory dropped the forms into a manilla folder. A lightness she hadn’t felt in ages lifted her.
“No,” Mallory said, “I hadn’t heard that.”
“I figured Jamie would have told you,” Charlie said. “He and Will still meet up now and again.”
Mallory had seen her brother at Thanksgiving not even a week ago. Jamie didn’t talk about the Jensens much, even though Mallory knew he was still friends with Charlie’s brothers, Matt and Will. He never mentioned them. Perhaps Jamie thought she ought not hear about Charlie.
“No,” Mallory said, her stomach flickering with anticipation.
“About a year ago,” Charlie said, “Mary Anne got a job in New York, so I’ve got the girls most of the time, which has been nice.”
Mallory knew nothing of Charlie’s children, let alone how old they might be. Old enough for an American Girl Doll, but young enough to break it quickly. Mallory could feel blood rushing through her limbs, loose and hot. She was like a stream thawing in the spring, dangerously overflowing.
“It’s Decorating Day,” Mallory invited, eager but unassuming. Charlie checked his watch.
“My mom is with the kids until six,” Charlie grinned. Mallory fastened up her jacket. Charlie paused before the stairs.
“Everything’s in the garage now,” Mallory said, leading him back out into the icy yard.
Charlie insisted that Mallory let him decorate the roof that hung over the front porch with the fat multi-colored bulbs. Mallory felt a bit bashful, insisting that she didn’t want all that attention.
“You have two dozen statues in your front yard,” Charlie remarked as he laid a ladder against the edge of the house. “Don’t tell me you don’t want to be noticed.”
Mallory stood at the bottom and watched him attach plastic clips to the shingles to secure each individual bulb. The deftness of Charlie’s work impressed her, and Mallory tried to place the tunes he was humming as he worked. She thought it might be Bruce Springsteen. At seventeen, they’d gone to the record store in town so that Charlie could use his lifeguarding money on “Born to Run.” Greg O’Connor, who worked the register, looked the two of them over with laughter in his eyes, and asked Charlie if he needed some lithium to balance him out, in case the Springsteen wasn’t enough. Charlie and Mallory didn’t go into town together after that.
“How old is your daughter?” Mallory asked, holding tight to the ladder rung at shoulder height.
“Jessica is seven, Ashley is eleven, and Carrie is, God help me, fifteen,” Charlie said, hopping off the second to last rung.
“I can’t believe you have a teenager. It feels like we were just teenagers,” Mallory said.
Charlie hesitated. There was a certain vulnerability in the slack of his face. “It does,” Charlie agreed.
They had finished decorating the porch, but Mallory hoped he might help her light up the Yard Babies closest to the sidewalk.
“Jessica reminds me of you,” Charlie remarked. “She has all of these beautiful toys and dolls. Some were brand new, some from her sisters. Doesn’t seem excited by any of it.” He pulled up his sleeve to check his watch.
“Beautiful objects don’t bring real happiness,” she said.
“I’ve got to get going,” he said, tugging the ladder off the lip of the gutter.
“Right,” Mallory said. “Kit should be fixed in ten days or less. I’ll give you a call.”
“I look forward to it,” Charlie said. He put the ladder against the garage, while Mallory slipped in behind him, pretending to rummage through her box of lights. She slid a hand through her hair, realizing she hadn’t tended to it in ages. Mallory was finding white hairs more regularly, and while it was disappointing, she hadn’t thought to cover them up. The National Doll Makers Conference last July was the last time Mallory had really tried to make herself presentable.
Charlie stepped into the garage, navigating the barrage of boxes. He casually picked up a leg from the top of a box.
“This looks like it could fit Kit,” Charlie mused.
“Well it’s more of an attachment issue —” Mallory began as Charlie drew her in for a hug.
Mallory’s cheek was nestled against the wool of his sweater, which smelled like the Charlie she knew, playing baseball and planting trees. Mallory tilted her chin up, remembering how the curve of his eyebrow felt against the pulp of her thumb. Charlie pulled back.
“You should come over one day,” Charlie said. “We’ll cook for you.”
Mallory rose to her toes.
“I’d love to meet your daughters,” Mallory beamed.
“Maybe you can bring Kit back yourself,” Charlie said. He leaned against the door of the minivan.
Mallory took a few steps toward him. Charlie opened the car door.
“It’s a date,” Charlie confirmed. “My girlfriend is a great home chef. You’ll be so impressed.”
It was dark now, the wind chill accelerating. It slapped Mallory backward, square on the chest.
“I’m sure I will be,” Mallory said, a hint of bitterness not hidden in her reply.
Charlie started the car, and with a wave, and no hesitance, backed away from Adams Street.
Mallory marched back into the garage, her footsteps cracking up the ice. She hovered over the box of Christmas lights, which mocked her in their merriment. Behind the decorations, a box of Jamie’s old sports equipment lay open accumulating dust. Mallory grabbed Jamie’s old baseball bat, its barrel furry with splinters, and carried it down the icy walk toward the now kaleidoscopic porch of the Doll Hospital. Mallory threw open the front door, a foreign pounding in her ribcage urging her onward. She stared at the cubbies of admitted dolls.
At the behest of her unanticipated rage, Mallory snatched Kit out of her box. Mallory tugged on the limp leg, pulling it at the angle she knew would make it snap. She held the bat above Kit’s buck toothed grin before pitching the one-legged doll wildly across the room toward the exam table. Kit hit the corner of the table and slammed to the floor.
She turned, heaving, to the hospital nursery and was nauseated by the sweetly primed baby dolls sleeping in their bassinets. She swung the bat at the glass until it burst, shooting shards across the hardwood. A piece of glass sliced the skin along Mallory’s cheekbone, which immediately began pulsating with pain.
She ran to the bathroom, manically pulling apart the toiletries in search of bandages she hadn’t used in ages. Mallory peeled apart a pile of hardening towels, not a part of the rotation of her favorites, desperate to find bandages she hoped were shoved in the back. There was a small thud, and an awkward object dropped from the unfurled towels.
Maurice, his skinny body worn and faded, tumbled out of a floral towel that Mallory hadn’t seen in twenty years. He was the same as ever, jeering and laughing, his face an odd symmetrical mask. She knew the value of dolls, and Maurice, though worn, was in good condition. He was nearly a hundred years old and would be worth thousands more than he had been in the seventies when his mother claimed to have sold him to an antique dealer in Kane County. Mallory gently laid him on the old towel, her mind sifting through the possible reasons for such a lie. She no longer found Maurice frightening, taunting, pointing his pearly index finger at her, identifying her unloveliness.
But decades later, here he was, the love her parents shared, never exchanged, sold or forgotten, simply hidden from sight. The clown had outlived them both, preserving their love, and accruing its value over time.
The morning after the traumatic evening that Mallory and Charlie had stayed up to watch Maurice, Mallory was struck with a sudden understanding that the doll had never moved by himself. Both a relief and loss, it was a bit of tricky magic disproven like Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. Maurice had only moved circumstantially, and Mallory often happened to be almost constantly watching, perhaps because she was constantly in the Doll Hospital. Quite loudly, Mallory continued to claim belief in the opposite. If Charlie thought she dreaded the clown, would he there be to protect her from Maurice’s haunting?
Mallory knelt and grabbed the wooden bat. With both hands around the grip, she stood up over Maurice. Without hesitation, she smashed Maurice’s little face repeatedly until he was unrecognizable. Mallory stood above the wreckage, chest heaving. Maurice was broken, utterly destroyed. Some might have said, not knowing the circumstances of his death, that Maurice had been well-loved.
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