Katya is a little girl living in Soviet-era Moscow. She loves to play with dolls, and she has a father doll that holds a special place in her heart because her own father is dead and many families are fatherless in Russia. Almost a year before receiving the father doll, Katya befriends a girl named Tania, who she becomes enthralled with after Tania throws a tantrum at a school event. They are extremely close, but Tania's insecurities creates conflict in their relationship as she persistently tries to compare her family with Katya's. Tania becomes wildly upset after Katya assumes that her father was also dead (he had defected to America). She makes comments about Katya's home and income level and tries to make herself seem better than Katya.
After a summer apart, during which Katya receives the gift of the father doll, the two are finally reunited. Katya is thrilled to show Tania her father doll, but Tania initially expresses apprehension until she sees its slight deformity, a leg that isn't attached quite properly. Tania dances around calling it a "cripple and retard," angering Katya so much that she yells terrible things about Tania's father at her and punches her.
Katya's mother takes away her dolls for two months as punishment, and though Katya is beside herself for that time, her attachment towards the dolls slowly diminishes. By the time she gets them back, she feels nothing, and the dolls are given away. She and Tania no longer speak to each other until Katya receives an invitation to Tania's going away party at the end of high school. It seems Tania wanted Katya to know that her father had sent for her from America, and that he hadn't forgotten her.
Many years later, Katya, now living in America and recently divorced, reconnects with Tania over Facebook, and they make plans to meet. Katya drives to Tania's place, where she finds a much older Tania, who chats endlessly while giving an extensive tour of her large house. Katya finds herself feeling the same insecurity, jealousy, and desire to one-up or bring Tania down, but doesn't act on them. She does laugh when she realizes that Tania had essentially recreated Katya's old dolls' life—a house in the countryside with chickens, lots of bedrooms, and even a husband with a limp in the same leg as the doll had had. Tania doesn't seem to realize this, but Katya drives away knowing that their lives had impacted each other's drastically, even into adulthood.