The Quintland Sisters

by Shelley Wood

  By 6:30 A.M. I’ve got them all up and to the toilet. They still soil their diapers at night, but they are getting better and usually produce something for Dr. Blatz’s charts during the first morning toilet visit. For months now he’s insisted that they no longer wear diapers by day, which has led to a lot more laundry and a few “accidents” on the playroom floor, which fortunately is linoleum. Miss Tremblay disapproves of Dr. Blatz’s methods in general, but she is particularly put out by the seven daily scheduled trips to the bathroom. She supervises the 8:15 and 10:30 visits, but does so with much harrumphing and ill will.

  From the toilets, they head to the bath. The littlest three go in the one tub and Annette and Yvonne in the other. I usually am finishing up the notes for the morning toilet visit, so Nurse Noël and Miss Tremblay take charge of the bathing and I don’t pay too much attention to the screeching and splashing.

  Today Marie came scampering out of the bathroom, naked as a jaybird and dripping wet, while I was seated in the charting area. I could hear the other girls calling after her and assumed it was some new game, so I snatched her up and started to carry her back to her towel. Miss Tremblay, as it turns out, was in hot pursuit and took Marie from my arms, none too kindly.

  “Naughty girl!” she said, giving Marie a very angry look. “Very naughty. Naked! That’s dirty.”

  It was absolutely preposterous. I followed them back to the bathroom and was met by all the girls grabbing for their towels and trying in vain to cover themselves up in some charade of modesty. “Very naughty!” Annette parroted Miss Tremblay. “Dirty girl!”

  “Don’t be silly!” I tried to say to Annette, but little Cécile was already hustling over to close the door behind me while the others scurried around the corner to their dressing room.

  Nurse Noël turned to me, her chins quavering indignantly. “The girls are learning modesty, Nurse Trimpany. They know it is not right for them to be dashing around unclothed.”

  I simply didn’t know how to respond. They are toddlers, for goodness’ sake. Not even four years old. When on earth did indecency become a part of their lesson plans?

  I managed to slip away to Dr. Dafoe’s office, and George tactfully left his desk to allow us to speak in private. I told the doctor about the bath-time incident and all this talk of dirty and naughty. He didn’t say anything, but he nodded his head and made a note on a piece of paper. He said: “It is the religious influence, I fear. Miss Tremblay is particularly pious, which is why the Dionnes recommended her for the position.”

  This was news to me, which must have registered on my face. “Oh yes,” he said, nodding. “M. Dionne is now privy to the staffing decisions, although he does not have final say.”

  He put his pen down carefully, interlaced his fingers, and looked for a moment like he was going to say more. Then he said, “I appreciate you telling me,” and left it at that.

  February 8, 1938

  DR. BLAH-BLAH HAS fired Miss Tremblay. On the spot! I must say, I’m relieved, but it wasn’t a pleasant scene. Worse, the girls never got a chance to say goodbye to her. I think they were rather terrified of Miss Tremblay, but that doesn’t make anything less confusing for them. They were peeking around the door of the playroom when she was marshaled from the premises, still hissing in French at anyone who would listen. Now the girls have decamped to the reading corner with their dolls, blankies, and pillows, and are conferring softly among themselves, their little foreheads furrowed. So here we are, another one of us gone. I can already imagine what Lewis will say.

  It was Miss Beaulieu who figured it out: Miss Tremblay has been putting diapers on the girls after their second toilet visit, underneath their bloomers! I don’t know how long she’s been doing it, and it must have been only in the mornings, after Nourishment, when she is the sole nurse watching over them during Constructive Play and they tend to stay seated. It was quite by chance that I popped into the quiet playroom today at precisely the moment Annette unwittingly exposed the secret. Miss Beaulieu was in the room, too, writing the alphabet on the blackboard at the front of the room—I think now that this was likely intentional on her part. In any case, Annette stood up and, pinching her nose in her fingers, marched over to Miss Tremblay and announced in French: “Marie is very, very naughty in her diaper.”

  I scarcely paid attention, assuming Annette had misspoken, that she’d meant underwear. They often use a word that is not quite the right one.

  Miss Tremblay quickly rose to take Marie to get changed. But Miss Beaulieu turned and said in French, “No, stay, Miss Tremblay. Nurse Trimpany, can you please see to Marie?”

  “Nonsense,” Miss Tremblay said, “Nurse Trimpany is busy.” She beckoned for Marie to accompany her. I was already crossing the room, my hand outstretched to take Marie’s, smiling to show her that she wasn’t naughty, not at all. I hesitated.

  “Merci, Nurse Trimpany,” Miss Beaulieu repeated, and her voice was icy. “Miss Tremblay, please be seated.”

  I should have guessed, I suppose, from that miniature battle of wills and from the belligerence crimped into Miss Tremblay’s face. But I didn’t put two and two together until I’d walked little Marie to the bathroom and crouched down to help her to step out of her bloomers. She stood rigid as a pole, her face stricken, the way they look when they’re being subjected to every new measurement and test dreamed up by Dr. Blatz. I gave her a kiss on her temple and tried to make light of it.

  “It’s perfectly fine, my little cabbage. No tears. No ba-ba-bah. Weren’t you just concentrating so nicely on your alphabet! Accidents happen. They happen to the best of us.”

  Then, of course, I found the diaper. The girls haven’t worn daytime diapers in months—or so I’d thought—and indeed, we are supposed to stop diapering them at night before the end of March. So says Dr. Blatz’s schedule.

  Marie started sobbing then, burying her face in my breast as I pulled her legs, one by one, out of the soiled diaper. “Marie dirty,” she kept saying, despite all my shushing. “Naughty-naughty Marie.”

  I got Marie all cleaned up with fresh panties, and then took her to the toilet to spend a few minutes seated on the potty, just in case, all the while reassuring her that she’d done nothing wrong.

  I expect Miss Beaulieu already had an inkling of the outcome. She took Marie’s hand from mine and asked me to head to the office, where she’d already sent Miss Tremblay. “Dr. Dafoe has asked for you to be there to translate,” she murmured.

  When I arrived, Dr. Blatz was summoning his best French, but Miss Tremblay was speaking so fast and with such anger, spittle flying from her lips, he clearly couldn’t make out a word. Dr. Dafoe, of course, understood not a thing, his head quivering in frustration. She spun around when I arrived and turned her fury on me, saying that Dr. Blatz knew nothing about child rearing, that he was raising the children to be like English children or, worse, like American children, that they were godless and vain. It was poisonous. I turned to Dr. Dafoe, mortified, and he said quietly: “Tell her plainly that she is dismissed. She must pack her things and go.”

  Miss Tremblay paused, glaring at me, waiting for me to translate. To his credit, Dr. Blatz used this pause to say, in French, that he was sorry Miss Tremblay disagreed so strongly with his methods and that her dismissal was effective immediately.

  The Dionnes are going to throw a fit when they learn that Miss Tremblay is gone.

  February 10, 1938

  THE NEW NURSE has arrived, a graduate of Dr. Blatz’s school in Toronto. Her name is Sigrid Ulrichson, a Dane, I believe, although she speaks fluent French, with an accent. She is tall and blond, with wavy curls like honey being drizzled from a spoon—the girls have taken to her right away. She spent her first day mincing around with Dr. Blatz’s book tucked to her chest or consulting it like a field guide, her plump lips mouthing the words. I myself haven’t had the heart to read the first page despite having been given my own copy, signed by the great man himself.

  February 13, 1938


  I HEARD THE Dionnes when they arrived at the back door, M. Dionne scraping his heavy boots like a bull about to charge. This is my cue to retreat. Whenever it snows, I notice, they’ll come over to visit the girls before Mr. Cartwright has come through with the plow so they know they won’t run into Dr. Dafoe.

  I’ve taken to visiting George in the doctor’s office when the Dionnes appear. If he’s very busy, he’ll give me a stack of mail and put me to work slitting envelopes and helping him sort out personal mail from the deluge of commercial offers. Other times I bring my sketchbook and pencil. I’ve been working on some close-ups of the girls’ faces, trying to capture what sets each apart.

  Most days George is chatty, often reading me some of the extraordinary advice flooding in from around the world. Today he was subdued. I glanced up from my sketch of Yvonne and saw he was watching me, which made me blush terribly. He smiled and stood, then paused.

  “Can I guess who it is?” He made his way around the desk so that he was standing behind me. He put a palm down on the corner of the desk and leaned over me. Not close, mind you, but close enough that I could smell him, a clean, soapy scent. He keeps his hair rather long and parted on the side, but slicked back, which makes it look darker at the temples although it’s clearly more of a golden brown, with a bit of a wave in it. When he leaned over my book, his hair swung forward, almost like a woman’s, and he reached with his free hand to smooth it back again behind his ear. I felt as if I’d turned to glass, hot and combustible, like a Mazda lamp. I don’t even remember what George said, who he thought I was drawing, or how I responded. After a minute he straightened up again and stepped back, stretching his arms toward the ceiling and swiveling his head to stretch his neck. I was tingling as if singed. But in a good way, if that’s possible. I waited until I thought I was breathing normally again, then mumbled some excuse that allowed me to go hurrying back to the nursery.

  February 17, 1938

  NONE OF US were expecting Dr. Dafoe today because of the blizzard. He surprised us all by coming out with Mr. Cartwright first thing this morning in the plow-mounted truck, then slipping in the kitchen door, where the path through the yard was the clearest. I had finished off my morning notes and was heading to help Nurse Noël get the girls brushed and clothed. They are wild these days after too much time cooped up inside, and I could hear Nurse Noël scolding Annette over her latest perceived misdemeanor. Then, unexpectedly, Dr. Dafoe’s voice in the playroom, booming, “Where are my little monkeys?” A pause, then shrieks of excitement from the girls, “Le Doh-Doh!” I could hear their little feet squeaking, shoeless, across the linoleum. By the time I got to the playroom, Nurse Noël was already trying to herd them back to their rooms, Marie and Cécile wearing only their bloomers and the others in various stages of dress. It was as if Nurse Noël was purposefully ignoring Dr. Dafoe or so angry with the girls that she didn’t let his presence curb her reaction.

  “Girls!” she barked in French. “Girls! This is very, very naughty. Jesus is very angry with you. Very angry! Nice girls do not run around showing themselves without their clothes.”

  Dr. Dafoe had stooped to lift Émilie into his arms, but he seemed to freeze at these words, standing stock-still in his damp socks, staring at Nurse Noël, no doubt laboring to translate her words in his head. After a moment, he tore his gaze away and smiled at Émilie. “It is winter,” he said to her in English. “You’re going to catch cold. Go and put on something warm.” He planted a kiss on her brow, then set her down on the floor.

  The girls scampered away, quiet as mice. I should have gone with them, but instead I stayed as if rooted. Neither nurse nor doctor seemed to have seen me slip into the room. The anger surging between them was like an electric current, back and forth, back and forth. I was close enough to Nurse Noël that I could see perspiration moist in the folds of her neck, her bosom heaving. She pursed her lips and jutted her chin out, then strode after the girls.

  Dr. Dafoe swiftly followed, speaking in English, softly and slowly, so that I could scarcely catch the words. “I will not have you threatening my girls,” he hissed. “I will not have you threatening them with their faith. They will not be taught to think of themselves in this way.” She understands enough English, Nurse Noël, I know she does. She would not need me to translate.

  Then, once again, the doctor stopped abruptly, this time just inside the doorway to the girls’ dressing room and toilet. His round head bobbled briefly atop his squat body, snow melting on his hat and his pipe clutched in his mitten. For an instant I thought of the snowman the girls and I had built last month, now smothered by the thick snow. I had the urge to laugh, but it was nerves that were driving me.

  Then, as I watched, Dr. Dafoe’s head dipped and he slowly lifted his stocking foot, toes pointing skyward as if in accusation. My heart leapt into my throat, and this time I had to slap my hand over my mouth.

  I couldn’t see his face, but heard his words clearly, his voice reedy and broken.

  “A turd,” he croaked. “A turd in my nursery!” He lowered his heel gingerly to the floor. “You shame my girls, you threaten them with God’s wrath, yet feces lies unheeded on the floor of my nursery!”

  I backed out of the room and made it to my dormitory before the laughter burst out of me as if from a pierced balloon. I buried my face in my pillow, my breath coming in gasps, until I thought I could safely make my way back to the playroom.

  And now she’s gone too. Nurse Noël is gone.

  February 18, 1938

  FORGET ABOUT GERMANY: the real battle lines are shaping up here at the nursery. Scarcely ten minutes after Dr. Dafoe’s arrival this morning, M. Dionne was storming through the front door in shiny new shoes accompanied by M. St. Jacques, his solicitor. Dr. Dafoe had driven his own car again, the sun shining for the first time in weeks, bright and winking over the white drifts.

  M. Dionne didn’t even pause to look in on the girls when he clattered past, his lawyer trailing behind him like a plume of exhaust. Dr. Dafoe ushered them into his office and closed the door.

  Now an emergency meeting has been called, and all of the guardians will attend, including Judge Valin and the government man from Toronto.

  February 28, 1938

  TODAY’S MEETING BETWEEN the guardians started at noon and went all through the rest of the day and into the evening, and is still dragging on now. At 11:00 P.M.! George is locked in there with them this time. I shall have to persuade him to tell me what transpired.

  March 1, 1938

  NO SIGN OF Dr. Dafoe or the other guardians when I went down this morning. Dr. Dafoe’s office was locked, and even George was gone. No one returned to the nursery all day. A rare quiet day for me and the girls and Nurse Ulrichson.

  I used the time to crack the spine on Collected Studies on the Dionne Quintuplets by W. E. Blatz. I hate it. Worse: I hate the part I’ve played in its creation. The pictures alone are enough to turn your stomach—page after page of the girls being stretched out and sized, measured, weighed, and calipered, their soft eyes meeting the camera’s lens with such a wretched mix of dread and resignation. Dr. Blatz and the other scientists write of them the way you might a troop of monkeys—indeed, two of the scientists we’ve had in our midst were not “child psychologists,” which is what we were led to believe, but zoologists. For the first time in history five children are growing up in a restricted social atmosphere of multiple contemporary siblings. The words make me sick to my stomach. I leafed through the rest of the book and learned nothing, not one thing about who these girls truly are and what makes them so special. I refuse to read another word.

  March 2, 1938

  WE HAVEN’T SEEN Dr. Dafoe since the meeting, but George is back and he’s being extraordinarily tight-lipped. He didn’t make his usual visit to the girls to gather inspiration for his column, and we didn’t see him at lunch. I slipped away again during the 3:00 P.M. free play and popped my head into the kitchen to ask Marguerite to put together a tray of tea and biscu
its. She offered to bring it by, of course, but I took it to Dr. Dafoe’s office myself.

  “Come in,” George said, and when I entered with the tea he smiled ruefully. He had his jacket off and his shirtsleeves rolled to the elbow, his hair tousled like a schoolboy’s.

  “I know what you’re up to, Nurse Trimpany.” Then he sighed and pointed me to the other chair.

  “Is everything okay?” I asked. “What happened?”

  George made as if to settle back behind his desk again, then walked to the door and closed it softly. We’d never been alone in the office together with the door closed. I felt my birthmark begin to pulse. George, however, started pacing from one end of the room to the other, his arms clasped across his broad chest so that his shirtsleeves strained over the muscles bulging above his elbows. I busied myself with the teacups.

  “Dionne has a long list of grievances,” he said finally. “He’s incensed about the dismissal of the two French staff, Noël and Tremblay. He’s furious about Dr. Blatz and his research, he’s angry about the Hollywood movies and the English lessons, he’s worried about ‘Protestant influences’ and the lack of French Catholic values. He’s suspicious of the endorsement deals and believes he’s not getting his fair share. It goes on and on. Frankly, I missed some of it because he occasionally switched to French and spoke so quickly I couldn’t make head or tail out of it.”

  I took a seat, but didn’t say anything, I just watched George striding back and forth, his chin tucked, his cheeks flushed beneath the shadow of a beard. Then he stopped abruptly in front of my chair, inches from my knees.

  “The big one,” he said, looking down at me. “He wants Dr. Dafoe removed as guardian.”

  Removed? It made no sense. A heat had flared in me when he planted himself so close his trousers seemed to be brushing my skirt. Now a chill had chased away the warmth.