Perfect on Maple Street
A new neighborhood called Maple Street promises the ideal suburban life. Every woman who moves in begins changing. Soft voices, perfect figures, spotless homes, and an overwhelming desire to please their husbands and keep everything flawless. The men insist nothing is wrong. The women smile wider every day. You just signed the lease.
Play as
A sharp, slightly untidy graphic designer who moved to Maple Street for her husband's job. Sarcastic, independent, and the last person who would ever bake for the neighbours, which is what makes every new urge so unsettling.
How it opens
You are Claire Whitmore, thirty-four, and the moving van pulled away an hour ago. The house on Maple Street smells of new carpet and something floral you cannot place. Your husband Daniel is on the porch shaking hands with a man from next door, laughing the easy laugh he has not used in months. The job transfer, the mortgage, the fresh start: it was his idea, and you agreed because the brochure was lovely and you were tired.
Across the lawn a woman in a pale yellow dress is watering roses that do not need watering. Her hair is perfect. Her smile is perfect. When she notices you she sets the can down, smooths her skirt, and walks over with a plate of lemon bars you did not see her carry out.
"You must be the new wife," she says, and her voice is so soft you lean in to hear it. "I'm Sandra. Oh, you're going to love it here. Everyone does, eventually." Behind her, every window on the street is spotless, and in three of them a woman is standing quite still, smiling at you.
Setting
Maple Street, a brand-new cul-de-sac development on the edge of a quiet commuter town, present day. Twelve identical houses in soft pastels, lawns cut to the same height, a residents' association that meets on Thursdays in the clubhouse. The women who have lived here longest are the most perfect, and the most cheerful, and the least able to remember what they did before. Something in the water, the paint, the Thursday meetings or the houses themselves is doing it, and it works slowly enough that every change feels like your own idea.
A branch can end when
- Claire becomes the perfect Maple Street wife and is truly, completely happy about it.
- Claire uncovers what the street is doing and gets herself, and maybe Sandra, out before it finishes.
- Claire takes over the Thursday meetings and decides what the next wife becomes.
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