Noah Haidle

All the trials of adult life are reflected in the imagination of a four-year-old girl named Lucy. Her real life is lonesome. The only people she has to play with are her mother (who's rarely there), and her babysitter, who seems more interested in her boyfriend, George, than in playing with Lucy. Her imaginary life is filled with drama. She has invented a very busy man named Mr. Marmalade who doesn't give her nearly enough attention, beats his imaginary secretary up, and has a cocaine addiction. This imaginary world collides with the real world when Lucy is introduced to a real boy named Larry, George's suicidal little brother. Larry gives her the attention that Mr. Marmalade could not (due to his very busy career), but there's a catch. Larry has two imaginary friends as well, a cactus and a sunflower, who interrupt Lucy's romantic dinner with a food-fight. Lucy kicks Larry and his friends out, and in the end takes back an apologetic Mr. Marmalade. Mr. Marmalade quit his job. He tells Lucy that he's been to rehab and that he wants to have lots of babies and live in a house with a white picket fence just like her. Flash forward to several hours later and Mr. Marmalade, drunk as usual and watching television, screams at Lucy to shut their baby up. When she cannot, he threatens to leave her for good. She kills the baby, and he leaves anyway. Lucy's real mother comes home with a strange man only to find that Lucy has ruined her slip with gobs of catchup.… (meer)