most gorgeous little cakes, with frosting that looked like real marzipan, and tiny ceramic strawberries on top, each berry no bigger than the head of a pin. A slice of cake could even be removed to show the chocolate and raspberry filling inside.
Puck’s Teeny Tinies produced intricate silver beer steins, the size of your pinky nail. She thought one of these might be a funny tribute to her husband, Pat, and the trip they’d taken to Germany a few years back.
Home Is Where the Heart Is was her favorite company. She probably spent eight or nine hundred dollars a month on the website. And now perhaps she’d get to meet the owners—Lollie and Albert Duncan, a married couple who had put themselves on the map with kitchenware items, almost all of which Ann Marie had purchased (gorgeous spatulas and whisks, a blueberry pie baked in a beer bottle cap, a stainless-steel fridge that hummed with the help of a single D battery).
At the end of the day, if she could keep her nerve up, she’d bring some of the photographs she had snapped to the Judges’ Circle booth, and submit them in the annual Dollhouse Designer Showcase. Winning was a long shot, she knew that. Most of these people had been competing for years; some were even professionals. But when she looked at her photos, she could swear she was staring at a real house, not a replica. Pat said he agreed completely.
She had gotten interested in dollhouses a year ago, with the intention of decorating one for her granddaughter. She bought a Victorian kit in a toy shop—three bedrooms, with a wraparound porch. Ann Marie spent a week lovingly putting the house together, piece by piece. She painted the outside a pale yellow with white trim. She hung curtains using a hot glue gun and scraps from her sewing basket—heavy green floor-length velvet in the living room, short red-and-white gingham in the kitchen, a fabric covered in multicolored polka dots in the nursery. Next, she added furniture: little blue-and-white painted bunk beds and a matching crib. A white rocking horse with silky hair. A toy chest. What looked like a real Kohler toilet in the bathroom, and fluffy hand towels she had made by cutting a facecloth into two-inch strips and sewing a white ribbon around the edge. She bought a sofa and an armchair for the living room. A grandfather clock. Side tables. A canopy bed for the master bedroom. A full kitchen set, complete with pots and pans, and teensy boxes of Cheerios and Tide.
She sometimes sat with a cup of tea and stared in amazement at her creation for half an hour, or longer. By the time she completed the project, she couldn’t bear to give the dollhouse away to the children, who would treat it like just another toy. When her granddaughter, Maisy, visited and brushed her grubby fingers against the white bedroom rug in the dollhouse, Ann Marie—known for her patience, especially with youngsters—had said in a rush, “Wash your hands first!” Afterward she felt silly, but it wasn’t such a ridiculous request.
The kids teased her about her new pastime, everyone but Little Daniel’s fiancée, Regina, who said she thought the dollhouse was beautiful. Regina was a sweet girl. She had been baptized and confirmed at Gate of Heaven in Southie, the same as Ann Marie. Of course, she had to be nice, since she was an outsider wanting into this family. Ann Marie knew how that went.
She had had plenty of hobbies before—scrapbooking and flower arranging and even quilting for a while. But nothing had ever grabbed her heart like the dollhouse. When she was growing up, her mother had run a motley household, with people in and out all the time, women from the neighborhood always clustered around the table playing cards, drinking whiskey, smoking cigarettes, filling the kitchen with gray clouds of cigarette smoke. They talked loudly over one another. Most of their sons were derelicts, bound for prison. If they were smart, like a few of her cousins had been, they became
Puck’s Teeny Tinies produced intricate silver beer steins, the size of your pinky nail. She thought one of these might be a funny tribute to her husband, Pat, and the trip they’d taken to Germany a few years back.
Home Is Where the Heart Is was her favorite company. She probably spent eight or nine hundred dollars a month on the website. And now perhaps she’d get to meet the owners—Lollie and Albert Duncan, a married couple who had put themselves on the map with kitchenware items, almost all of which Ann Marie had purchased (gorgeous spatulas and whisks, a blueberry pie baked in a beer bottle cap, a stainless-steel fridge that hummed with the help of a single D battery).
At the end of the day, if she could keep her nerve up, she’d bring some of the photographs she had snapped to the Judges’ Circle booth, and submit them in the annual Dollhouse Designer Showcase. Winning was a long shot, she knew that. Most of these people had been competing for years; some were even professionals. But when she looked at her photos, she could swear she was staring at a real house, not a replica. Pat said he agreed completely.
She had gotten interested in dollhouses a year ago, with the intention of decorating one for her granddaughter. She bought a Victorian kit in a toy shop—three bedrooms, with a wraparound porch. Ann Marie spent a week lovingly putting the house together, piece by piece. She painted the outside a pale yellow with white trim. She hung curtains using a hot glue gun and scraps from her sewing basket—heavy green floor-length velvet in the living room, short red-and-white gingham in the kitchen, a fabric covered in multicolored polka dots in the nursery. Next, she added furniture: little blue-and-white painted bunk beds and a matching crib. A white rocking horse with silky hair. A toy chest. What looked like a real Kohler toilet in the bathroom, and fluffy hand towels she had made by cutting a facecloth into two-inch strips and sewing a white ribbon around the edge. She bought a sofa and an armchair for the living room. A grandfather clock. Side tables. A canopy bed for the master bedroom. A full kitchen set, complete with pots and pans, and teensy boxes of Cheerios and Tide.
She sometimes sat with a cup of tea and stared in amazement at her creation for half an hour, or longer. By the time she completed the project, she couldn’t bear to give the dollhouse away to the children, who would treat it like just another toy. When her granddaughter, Maisy, visited and brushed her grubby fingers against the white bedroom rug in the dollhouse, Ann Marie—known for her patience, especially with youngsters—had said in a rush, “Wash your hands first!” Afterward she felt silly, but it wasn’t such a ridiculous request.
The kids teased her about her new pastime, everyone but Little Daniel’s fiancée, Regina, who said she thought the dollhouse was beautiful. Regina was a sweet girl. She had been baptized and confirmed at Gate of Heaven in Southie, the same as Ann Marie. Of course, she had to be nice, since she was an outsider wanting into this family. Ann Marie knew how that went.
She had had plenty of hobbies before—scrapbooking and flower arranging and even quilting for a while. But nothing had ever grabbed her heart like the dollhouse. When she was growing up, her mother had run a motley household, with people in and out all the time, women from the neighborhood always clustered around the table playing cards, drinking whiskey, smoking cigarettes, filling the kitchen with gray clouds of cigarette smoke. They talked loudly over one another. Most of their sons were derelicts, bound for prison. If they were smart, like a few of her cousins had been, they became
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