The Quintland Sisters

by Shelley Wood

  This was all going on in full force when the Dionnes made their appearance. Nurse Nicolette, despite being fully aware that the Dionnes are to visit only during their allotted hours, allowed the parents into the playroom, thinking, I suppose, that they would also enjoy the fun. Instead, Mme. Dionne’s face clouded, dark as a storm. She started shouting in French and stomped over to the girls, snatching away their shamrocks, one by one.

  She was angry—we were swiftly made to understand—because St. Patrick’s Day is a religious holiday and should be marked more solemnly, not with trinkets and symbols and horseplay. She turned on Fred with a stream of angry French that I knew he would scarcely have understood. Meanwhile, the girls, who had been having such fun, broke into sobs, tottering over to me and Ivy, arms outstretched. This of course infuriated Mme. Dionne even further. She grabbed at Cécile, who has always been her favorite, and clamped her tightly to her breast while Cécile wailed and wailed. I hope Fred got enough of his photos before the Dionnes arrived, because the girls were a blotchy mess when they finally settled down again for lunch.

  April 3, 1936

  A FUNNY CONVERSATION with Ivy tonight. If we are both working the evening shift together, which we often are, we’ll linger for a while in the girls’ bedroom until they’re all asleep. We started doing this back when Yvonne and Annette first learned to climb in and out of bed like monkeys and would scamper over to one of their sisters to try to get a game going. Some nights we’d pop in to check on them only to find Yvonne in Émilie’s bed, or Annette snuggled in with Cécile. I was all for letting them sleep like that, but Dr. Blatz believes it’s confusing for the subconscious to not have consistency each night. Whatever that means.

  So Ivy and I will get them all tucked in, then we’ll seat ourselves on the bench under the windows. If it’s been a long day, we often sit in silence, listening to the girls muttering to one another and settling themselves down for the night. Other times we’ll talk about pretty much anything, silly or solemn, keeping our voices low and mild. I think the girls find it soothing, hearing us close at hand. This is the time of day when our home, the nursery, seems to pull away from the rest of the world and dips below the horizon so that all the squinting eyes that follow us every hour of every day can’t quite make us out. We’re left in peace.

  Mme. Dionne hasn’t set her plump foot on the property since the St. Patrick’s Day fiasco. The biggest shadow across our doorstep these days is a bizarre lawsuit between the St. Lawrence Starch Company and the Canada Starch Company. It’s front-page news in the local paper and the Star, which is extraordinary given everything else going on in the world these days. Supposedly the companies are fighting over which has the right to declare itself the official corn syrup of the Dionne quintuplets. I would laugh about it if I wasn’t so worried what it might mean for the girls. Fred heard from a reporter at the Star that both companies have paid thousands of dollars into the girls’ trust fund. I’m worried that, depending on how things turn out, some of this money may need to be given back.

  “That’s never going to happen,” Ivy said firmly, her voice low.

  She is always so confident about this, Ivy. She says the girls will never, ever have to worry about money and that there is no point in me worrying about it either.

  “The tricky part will be how they’ll ward off all the gold-digging suitors knocking down their door when they’re old enough,” she said. She liked this image, I could tell. She was smiling in the dim light, wide enough that I glimpsed her snaggletooth. I love Ivy’s smile.

  “I don’t think the girls will ever get married, do you?” I said. “I can’t even imagine them wanting to be with anyone other than each other. So they will need their trust fund to last a very long time.”

  Ivy gave me a strange look then. She thinks I should be thinking more about marriage in general and certainly not advocating a life of spinsterhood for our little girls.

  “They’ll want to live normal lives, Emma. You know that, right? All of this”—she waved her hand around the bedroom, but I knew she was referring to the entire nursery and hospital—“this is just for now, right?”

  I didn’t say anything; I looked at the dark shapes outside the window. The snow was almost gone and the moon had not yet risen, so the shadows in the yard below seemed all the more absolute and unknowable.

  “I guess I just can’t picture them having other kinds of lives,” I said finally.

  What I didn’t say is that I can’t picture me having a different kind of life either. A life without them. I have a purpose here that I didn’t have before, and I can’t imagine I’ll find that again elsewhere.

  We sat there for a long while, not saying anything, our ears tuned to the sighs and murmurs of the girls. Sometimes one of them will make a sudden start or a louder cry and I want to go to her, to lift her in my arms and cradle her until she falls asleep again. The doctors don’t like us disturbing them, even when they wake crying or upset, but some nights I can’t stop myself.

  As I was about to rise and leave, Ivy spoke. “I will have my own babies one day, Em. I love our girls, but the point is, they aren’t ours, are they? I need to have my own. And so should you. You are so good with them.”

  Ivy and I have shared so much together—when she talks like this, which she does more and more these days, I can’t quite bring myself to say again what I’ve told her so many times. I don’t want children of my own. I don’t want marriage and a husband. I don’t have dreams like that crowding in on the dream I’m living now.

  April 14, 1936

  Miss Emma Trimpany

  Dafoe Hospital and Nursery

  Callander, ON

  Dear Miss Trimpany,

  I was delighted to receive your sketches—you prefer the pastels to the paints, I gather! I’m of the same mind. Perhaps oils are best suited for fruit bowls, flowers, and dowagers. There is a fluidity to the strokes of pastel or charcoal that a paintbrush certainly matches, but there is simply no time with our young subjects to pause to dip the brush, don’t you find?

  First things first. You have the eye, my dear. You have the eye. You must keep at this.

  I’ve enclosed a list of specific suggestions related to the five pieces you’ve sent, which I hope you’ll find useful, mostly technical tips and a few ideas regarding lighting. That said, the most important thing I think I can tell you is to trust your heart and trust your instincts. Understand who you can learn from and what you might learn, but don’t rely on anyone else too deeply lest you lose what is uniquely yours.

  I’m intrigued by your careful comments about the girls and their telltale distinctions. It’s an interesting dilemma you pose for me, because of course their adoring public believes the quintuplets to be identical in every way. It is, in part, my duty to paint them to suit expectations. But your letter moved me to think of these little girls somewhat differently than I did when I met them last year. Each, as you say, is one unique part of a unique whole. I will take your suggestions to heart and will do my best to make sure we don’t lose sight of that, or that at least you and I don’t lose sight of that. I’ve taken a fresh piece of paper and tacked it on the wall in my studio to remind me, with this line from your letter:

  They are in as many ways different as they are alike.

  Thank you and best wishes,

  Maud Tousey Fangel

  145 East 72nd

  New York, NY

  April 25, 1936

  Ivy and Fred are engaged. Fred asked her the moment he got back from Nova Scotia. Now Ivy is floating around the nursery as if a light breeze is circling her feet and keeping her aloft. I’ve never seen her so happy. Fred didn’t stay long this morning—he must be exhausted after the past week—but I saw him when he and Ivy announced their news. He, too, looks like he might burst with gladness. The girls crowded around to see what we were all exclaiming over when Ivy was showing us her ring. Marie and Em were very worried at first, because tears started leaking out of Ivy’s eyes, and the
two of them conferred, then trotted off to find a handkerchief that they brought for Ivy, who laughed and gathered them in a big hug. It’s on her face, plain as day: joy but also a sadness. One way or another, things here will change.

  It’s been a strange week for us, with Fred gone to cover the mine disaster in Moose River. It’s the first time the Star has assigned Fred to a story other than the famous Dionne quintuplets, or at least in the time we’ve known him. His photos from Moose River have been on the front page of the Star for days. I like to think my sketches can capture something that a photograph cannot, but I’m not sure I can say that of Fred’s haunting photos—the stooped men coming out of the mines, their long faces as they sat in the back of the ambulance waiting to be taken from the dark grave they’d finally escaped.

  Last week the Canadian Radio Broadcasting Commission actually had a man stationed at the mine itself, giving hourly updates on the rescue efforts. Ivy and I agreed, we’ve never heard anything quite like it. We were on tenterhooks—he made us picture the barren plains, the dark mine shaft, the chill of the rocks, and the steady drip of rising water. It gave me goose bumps. Ivy was even more caught up in it, no doubt convincing herself that Fred and all of the newspapermen, photographers, newsreel men, broadcasters, and medics camped out at the site for days were themselves at risk of plunging down a mine shaft the very next instant.

  We cried when we heard the men coming out of the mine, on the radio. One man didn’t come out, of course, or not on his own two feet. That is the worst thing to think about. Not only were the men trapped in a space the size of a privy but they were trapped with the body of Mr. Magill for days.

  I have a hundred questions for Ivy, but she was given the night out to visit her father with Fred. With luck the Dionnes won’t show up for Mass tomorrow; we could use a quiet day to settle back into our regular routines. Dr. Dafoe has told us the work crews are coming to break ground for the new playground and gallery starting Monday. I can’t imagine what M. Dionne thinks about that.

  May 8, 1936

  NURSE JACQUELINE NOËL has joined us on staff. She is short and stout, to put it kindly, but surprisingly dainty on her feet. She moves like a barge gliding silently down a river and has twice made me jump by tapping my shoulder as I sat behind my desk, thinking myself alone. The girls have fallen swiftly into line, leaping to obey her commands.

  I came here to Mother and Father’s house tonight. Mother has been asking me to bring my art supplies home from the nursery so I can sketch Edith, and I’ve done so. I’m trying to ignore the irony here—Mother spent years discouraging me from “scribbling,” as she always called it, only to turn around and ask me now if I’d sketch my baby sister.

  I arranged to get a lift with the Cartwrights after they’d delivered the day’s stones. I had my overnight bag plus my easel, sketchbook, and the big case that holds my paints, palette, and pastels at the back door when they brought their truck through the inner gates of the nursery after supper. Both Lewis and his father hustled over to help.

  Lewis smiled and dipped his head, saying nothing, but Mr. Cartwright had half a dozen questions, asking me if I was running away from the nursery. I laughed and explained that I was going to do some sketches of my baby sister, and they both seemed delighted. I don’t suppose they knew about my drawings of the quintuplets, or that I had been helping Mrs. Fangel, which is a good thing, I suppose. I said that I’d been drawing the babies since they were born and that Dr. Dafoe encouraged me, even supplying me with my pastels, charcoal, and paints.

  Lewis nodded his head slowly and murmured, “It’s r-rare these days that we get the time to do the things we care about.”

  Mr. Cartwright opened his mouth as if to say something, then snapped it shut again, as astonished as I to hear his son speak up. That’s the most I’ve ever heard Lewis say in a single breath! He carried my supplies to the truck, then put his hands on the sides and swung himself up, settling himself beside my things, his back against the rear of the cab. For someone so tall and gangly, he moves with surprising grace. I suppose he must be very strong, filling all those buckets of stones.

  Climbing behind the wheel, Mr. Cartwright launched into a long story about how he used to dabble in writing the odd verse and how he had intended to do more of that in his retirement. “But look at me now!” he said cheerfully, gesturing at the road and laughing. “This doesn’t look much like poetry, does it?”

  When we pulled up at the house, Lewis hopped out of the back again and helped me lift out my easel and bags. He cleared his throat and said, “My father and I would love to see your sketches, if you’d be willing.”

  “I’ll likely have something to show you Sunday night. Unless Edith’s a monkey and won’t keep still.”

  He looked like he was going to say something else, but didn’t, doing his default blink and nod. Lewis has quite unusual eyes, wide-set and a bit large in his long face, but a lovely hazel color, like his father’s—deep blue at the edge, turning dark amber near the pupil. Tricky to paint, I’d imagine. I must be getting to know him better, because I realized from his silence that he didn’t mean Edith.

  “You mean, you want to see my sketches of the quintuplets,” I corrected myself.

  He looked up and flashed the ghost of a smile.

  “We would indeed, Miss Trimpany,” he said and busied himself brushing the dust off my bag. “It’s a bit of a joke Father and I have that we’ve made more trips to the Dafoe Hospital and Nursery than anyone in the world, yet we almost never get a chance to see the babies.”

  May 10, 1936

  I SHOWED LEWIS and his father some of my sketches of Edith once they’d brought me back to the nursery. Very rough work, but I think I captured her quite nicely—it’s enough that I can keep working on something larger back at the nursery, if I get the chance. Lewis was very complimentary, and I promised to show him some of my work of the quintuplets another time. It seems he actually knows something about drawing, which I hadn’t expected.

  He helped me ferry my things back to the kitchen door, and I asked if he’d taught art when he was a schoolteacher. He blushed almost as red as my birthmark and said he’d taught mathematics and physics, but only as a substitute teacher. I must have looked confused: his father has told me several times that Lewis studied to be a schoolteacher.

  He cast a look at the truck, where his father sat waiting. Standing with my bags and cases made him look even more lanky than usual, the cuffs of the shirt beneath his dusty overalls straining to reach his bony wrists. He stooped to set down my things, lowering his soft voice even further, but when he spoke it was clear as a bell, his stammer gone.

  “I actually studied engineering at the University of Toronto,” he said. “I specialized in aeronautics. My dream was to build airplanes.”

  I was astonished by this declaration, but knew better than to say anything. He straightened himself up again, his face creased. “Father thinks, if I build airplanes, I will want to fly them, and he saw a lot of what happens to pilots in the war. In the end he convinced me to turn to teaching instead, saying there’d be more work for teachers than engineers.”

  I looked up, and he managed a smile. Lewis has one of those faces that is entirely changed by smiling—the bones of his long face shift so that his cheekbones bounce upward and out, making wide dimples. “Turns out there’s not much work for teachers either,” he said.

  “Have you been up in an airplane?”

  He nodded, smiling wider.

  “Wasn’t it terrifying?”

  He nodded again. “Terrifying and wonderful.”

  May 29, 1936 (La Voix)

  * * *

  BIRTHDAY BROADCAST RINGS OUT AROUND THE WORLD

  Babies’ Wealth Approaches $500,000

  CALLANDER, Ontario—A special radio crew and celebrity commentator, Frazier Hunt, were the only visitors allowed into the Dafoe Nursery for the much-anticipated second birthday of the Dionne Quintuplets. Visitors and dignitaries were turned away a
nd, with the rest of the world, could only listen to how the celebrations played out over the radio. And what did this sound like? Why, that was Émilie blasting on the tinhorn, Yvonne on the drums, and rascally Cécile tugging on the microphone cord while Dr. Dafoe tried to say his piece. It was not until Nurse Yvonne Leroux began to sing a quaint French folksong that the Quints fell into line and did a little dance, raising their plump arms in the air and spinning this way and that, their petticoats flaring.

  The Dionne parents were not in attendance although they, too, received a gift today: a cheque to the tune of $1,000, paid them by the guardians. Minister of Welfare, Mr. David Croll, citing a new film contract signed on behalf of the babies, announced today that the coffers of the Dionne Quints have now reached half a million dollars and that this estate belongs to the Dionne family as a whole and not the Quints alone.

  “I convey the government’s congratulations to Mr. and Mrs. Oliva Dionne. These are their babies—we have never forgotten that fact. The important thing is that the children are here in the nursery specifically designed for their particular needs: that they have never been moved from the safety of Callander, never exploited nor cheapened, available always to their parents, who can—and do—visit them daily. . . . We would like everyone in Canada and the United States to come and visit them this summer.”

  In the newly signed contract, the Twentieth Century Fox will pay $250,000 for the rights to the next three feature pictures featuring the children, to be completed before the end of 1938. Another $50,000 will be paid in two years, in addition to the 10 per cent royalties the babies will receive from the net receipts from each picture. Thursday’s new movie contract brought the quintuplets’ cash on hand to $450,000, with more waiting in the wings.