The Quintland Sisters

by Shelley Wood

  Mr. Cartwright has been asked to ferry the rest of the staff, including the ladies from the kitchen. I saw Mr. Cartwright earlier today when I took some tea things back from George’s office, and he was looking well. I asked after Lewis, and he said, “Very well, very well.” Then he asked me if he’d be taking me in to see the picture later and I had to say I’d already accepted a ride with Mr. Sinclair. He seemed disappointed, I fear, but I assured him he’ll be seeing plenty of me any day now, when the snow falls and I’ll be calling on him to help me get home to see Edith.

  I’ve decided on my green dress. It’s not particularly new, but I think it looks smart with my navy hat.

  October 28, 1938—almost midnight

  THE GIRLS WERE so sweet in the motion picture; it is enough to shatter your heart into a million pieces. The cinema was packed and erupted with laughter and sighs and whoops each time the girls did something silly, especially performing some of their musical numbers and tumbling with their puppies. Jean Hersholt, Cesar Romero, and Claire Trevor were also very good, of course, but our babies stole the show.

  I can’t read George. I sat beside him in the theater and, when the lights went down, felt something like an electric current running between my knee and his, although he was a perfect gentleman and never so much as nudged me. Miss Callahan was on his other side, however, and I can’t quite get a reading on her either. When he turns to speak with me, I feel like he’s giving me every ounce of his attention. But then, I think that’s just George, because he’s as courteous and attentive with Nurse Corriveau and Miss Callahan as he is with me.

  Oh, for heaven’s sake, I sound like a silly schoolgirl. This isn’t me. Truly.

  Is it?

  November 1, 1938

  A LETTER FROM Lewis, asking me the most extraordinary thing, I don’t quite know what to make of it, or what I should say in return. I can’t possibly have mentioned George in every letter. Why on earth would I do that?

  God, I miss Ivy. She would know exactly how to respond.

  Meanwhile, all the girls can talk about is meeting the princesses. Of England, they mean. There’s been so much talk about the King and Queen and whether they might come and visit us at Quintland. The girls have dug all of their prettiest dress-up clothes out of their trunks, even the gowns they can barely squeeze themselves into, and are playing “Princess” every day. We’ve tried to explain to them that the princesses won’t be coming on the royal tour next year, but for whatever reason, they are adamant that it will be children who visit them, not the King and Queen. They are tired of grown-ups, Annette informed me. What does that tell us, I wonder. I don’t want to think about it.

  We’re having a terrific storm today: driving rain and a howling wind lashing the nursery. Apart from Cécile, who is hooting with excitement and pressing her nose to the windows, exhilarated, the girls are a bit frightened by it and extra cuddly as a result.

  November 9, 1938 (Toronto Star)

  * * *

  QUINTS IN “FINE SHAPE” AFTER OPERATION

  Marie Leads Parade as All 5 Lose Tonsils On Dining Room Table

  First Carried in at 9:10 and Last Carried Out at 12:15 O’clock

  NO TRANSFUSIONS: None of Sisters Worried

  The world’s best-loved quintet is still intact.

  Marie, Annette, Émilie, Cécile, and Yvonne—in that order—came safely today through the ordeal of having their tonsils and adenoids removed. The surgeries were performed onsite at the Dafoe Hospital and Nursery.

  Early this afternoon the Dionne girls were all reported “in fine condition.”

  Marie’s was the hardest operation of the five. The actual operating time was 13 minutes. Annette came next with actual operation time, 9 minutes. Then came Émilie, and it took 10 minutes of actual operating.

  Both Yvonne and Cécile, who followed in turn, had their tonsils removed in 8 and a half minutes each.

  The most precious fluid in the world—human blood—was brought here in shiny cans today against the possible need of a transfusion for one or all of the Dionne quintuplets.

  The blood for transfusion, if needed, came from professional donors in Toronto in much the same way as the mother’s milk was brought from Chicago and Toronto during the first few days of the Quints’ existence four years ago last May.

  At the same time, two human donors stood ready to supply germ-free blood of the same type from their own veins if surgeons felt a direct transfusion to be more desirable. These human donors are both parents, Oliva, the father, and Elzire, the mother.

  Used with permission.

  November 11, 1938

  The girls are already up and about and eating coddled eggs and soft cereals with no trouble whatsoever. Last night they got vanilla ice cream, which they lapped up like kittens. Cécile wanted to know when they could get more tonsils taken out, so they can have more ice cream. I was foolish to worry so much, I suppose, but talking myself out of worrying has never been an option.

  November 16, 1938

  I AM TWENTY-TWO years old today. Old enough to know what I want, presumably.

  November 20, 1938

  Miss Emma Trimpany

  Dafoe Hospital and Nursery

  Callander, ON

  My dear Emma,

  How are you? How goes your painting and drawing? Any gems you’d care to share? How are the little angels? I can tell you, all of New York was riveted by the news of their tonsil operation—I’m very glad that went well.

  I’m enclosing a pamphlet that I hope you’ll take a look at. As you know, I think, I am one of the adjunct teachers at the Art Students League of New York. The school has finally launched the international scholarship program several of us have been pushing for. There are five positions earmarked for Canadian applicants, and I think you have an excellent chance of being accepted. I’m happy to provide any feedback or suggestions you would need for your portfolio, and there are some specific requirements for subject, medium, and techniques that might take some time to put together. Your application would need to be in by the end of May next year in order to be considered for entrance that year. I hope you’ll seriously consider it. If you’d prefer to discuss this by telephone, I’d be happy to arrange a time to call you at the nursery.

  I have little in the way of news—I’m teaching a fair bit, and this has pushed my own work to the side for now, which I admit is getting me down. There is so much to drag one down, I find. An old friend of mine was killed in the New England hurricane you likely heard about, in September, and it’s left me feeling very low. Plus the events in Europe make it difficult to feel like painting, don’t you find? A great number of people in the art world here in New York are Jewish, and we are all watching Mr. Hitler with our hearts in our throats. He’s mad, I believe, yet no one seems willing to stop him.

  I don’t mean to end on a sour note. Please, my dear Emma, have a look at the enclosed and tell me if you’d consider it.

  Warmest wishes,

  Maud Tousey Fangel

  145 East 72nd

  New York, NY

  December 7, 1938

  I was planning to speak with Dr. Dafoe today about Mrs. Fangel’s pamphlet. I scarcely slept, trying out what I might say or how I might phrase it in my head. It all comes down to the plans for this new house for all of the Dionnes and whether that’s real or not. If there’s a chance I’ll be out of a job next fall—because there is no way M. Dionne would keep me on staff—well, it would make sense to plan ahead. On the other hand, I desperately don’t want to go. Anywhere. Despite everything, I’m happy here and I feel like I’m still needed. Ivy would tell me I must absolutely apply, but then, Ivy took to New York like a duck to water. All of her thrilling stories! How on earth could someone like me get along in a place like that? I could ask George for his advice, but I worry it might sound like I’m trying to nudge him toward a different topic altogether, which I’m not. Truly. Odd as it sounds, I don’t feel like asking Mother and Father. They are so bound up with little
Edith they’d prefer to think of my life as settled on its course, their parental duties discharged. Not to mention they’ve come to depend on the income I send home. That leaves me with Dr. Dafoe. He might not be the most thoughtful, but at least he’d be objective.

  I needn’t have stayed up half the night worrying about it. Dr. Dafoe has left again for New York, George told me when he arrived today. Meanwhile all of the doctor’s correspondence, newspaper articles, lectures, and whatever else fall to poor George. He has dark shadows under his eyes these days and needs a haircut desperately, not to mention a secretary of his own. He’s working late most nights, leaving to drive back to North Bay long after the rest of us have headed to bed, no doubt taking a stack of unread mail along with him. It’s too much, I think. Too much for one man.

  I’ve done a small pastel of George “taking tea” with the girls in the playroom, and I’m going to give it to him for Christmas. I hope he likes it.

  December 20, 1938

  I’M NOT SURE I can even set this down in print; my hands are shaking, my thoughts tumbling all over the place. But I can’t sleep, can’t switch off the light, can’t cope with the dark, can’t lie down. I’ve been pacing back and forth in my tiny room, waiting for my heart to slow down and my breath to go back to normal. I feel trapped, but also tiny and small. Erased and invisible. Oh, yes. Invisible as usual.

  As if I could ever be anything else.

  I’m kicking myself for not going home tonight when I had the chance. But imagine if I had? Oh God. I feel sick and foolish and angry and sad. Desperately sad.

  Let me try to write this down.

  Nurse Corriveau left for her Christmas holidays yesterday, and I was to go tonight. A relief nurse is coming from the Red Cross tomorrow to help Miss Callahan through the Christmas week until Nurse Corriveau returns. The problem is, all of the girls are down with a terrible bug, and I’ve got it too. My head has been throbbing like someone is beating it with a mallet, and there is a heaviness in my chest that makes me fearful of inhaling too deeply. If Dr. Dafoe were here, I’d have him listen with his stethoscope, but he’s still away, of course. He is always away. Indeed, the doctor telephoned earlier in the evening, while George was still in the office, to say that he was extending his visit in New York until the New Year.

  Mr. Cartwright came to the back steps at seven this evening to fetch me home with my bags, and Lewis was with him, which was a nice surprise. He looks well, Lewis, dressed sharply in a long gray topcoat with lovely, wide lapels, looking broader somehow—broad enough to match his height. And he looks younger too, if that’s possible. As if time at a desk has helped to erase a year or two of worries.

  Oh, Lewis. He’s been so droll and candid in his letters with his talk of pigeons and planes. Perhaps we could have picked up from there if I hadn’t been feeling so out of sorts and he looking less like a city man, so polished and poised. Instead it was as if we’d changed roles and it was I whose rough tongue was tripping all over itself, my eyes unsure of where to look. When I first came into the kitchen, Lewis smiled his broad smile, as open as I’d ever seen it, and it lingered on his lips until I said I wasn’t going to go with them this evening. The thing is, I was feeling so poorly, and the girls were so sickly themselves I told them I’d better stay to help Miss Callahan through the night. I knew that the Cartwrights would be coming back in the morning to bring the relief nurse to the nursery, so it wouldn’t be yet another special trip. I apologized profusely, and they were both very kind, saying not to worry, and of course I must get some rest and so on.

  I left the kitchen, telling Marguerite that I wouldn’t be needing anything more. Then I stopped by the girls’ room, and they were all snuffling and snorting, but seemingly asleep. I poked my head into the charting area to let Miss Callahan know that I had decided to stay, if she needed me, but she wasn’t there and I didn’t think to leave a note, I just climbed into my bed and was out like a light, I’m sure, within a matter of minutes.

  Sometime later I was woken by some thumps and muffled voices. My heart started racing. I switched on the bedside lamp and checked my clock: just after 11:00 P.M. My first instinct was for the girls’ safety, so I crept to their room as quick as I could. The five of them were sleeping soundly, and I could still hear murmuring and something being nudged across the floorboards somewhere at the other end of the corridor, toward Dr. Dafoe’s office.

  Perhaps I have a fever—it certainly feels that way now—but my first thought was that Dr. Dafoe had come back and surely I should tell him as soon as possible that the girls were ill. This was irrational, I know, because we’d heard that very day that he was hundreds of miles away, in New York City. But I simply didn’t think for a moment that it could be an intruder. There are five full-time constables guarding the nursery around the clock: it would be next to impossible for someone to break in. But why wasn’t I more scared? Why didn’t I stop by Miss Callahan’s room to let her know that something was afoot and that I was having a look, or that she should accompany me? I don’t know why. Or maybe I did, I just didn’t realize it.

  Only when I was right outside Dr. Dafoe’s office did it register with me that one of the voices was a woman’s. Miss Callahan’s. She has a lovely voice, a radio voice: a deep, slow, buttery way of speaking, which I think is one reason the girls have come to love her and do her bidding. Indeed, she’s supplanted me as their number one choice of reader at story time.

  I froze. She was in Dr. Dafoe’s office with someone, that much was clear. With a man. It was none of my business, of course, how Miss Callahan was spending her evening when—I realized at that moment—she likely thought I was three miles away, in Callander, with my parents. But surely she shouldn’t be in Dr. Dafoe’s office unless she was with Dr. Dafoe himself? But with whom if not Dr. Dafoe? One of our guardsmen? M. Dionne?

  I should have left well enough alone, I know that. I’m not usually so nosy. But the door was ajar and the room beyond, dimly lit. Bright enough, however, that if I stood well back I could peer in without anyone realizing I was outside in the corridor. So that’s what I did.

  It was Miss Callahan all right, laughing low and smooth, seated sideways on someone’s lap. A man’s lap, as if she were one of the girls asking for a bedtime story. She was seated sideways, laughing, on George’s lap.

  December 25, 1938

  I HAVEN’T FELT like writing in my scribble book, and I can scarcely go back and read what I last wrote. Worse: what I’ve been writing for months. It’s been a blessing to be home with Mother, Father, and busy little Edith—it’s helped to take my mind off the nursery.

  My cold has settled so soundly into my chest I worry it might be pneumonia. Mother made up a bed on the couch in the living room rather than keep Edith up all night with my coughing or risk her catching this. But Christmas was pleasant enough, with a fresh blanket of snow yesterday that made everything look clean and gleaming, just in time.

  Mr. Cartwright and Lewis stopped in on Christmas Eve, early in the afternoon just as the snow started coming down. It was Lewis who brought me into Callander last week after that terrible night. Whether it is the pleasure of his work, or big city life, or the camaraderie of so many brainy men—and women—all toiling together at something they love, I don’t know, but Lewis is subtly changed. Somehow, despite all these months of letters, I felt, seeing Lewis again, as if I knew him less, not more. Or rather, that there is a lot of Lewis still to get to know. He was as courteous as ever, no question, hastening to help me carry my bags and packages out to the truck. And his quirky eye for detail remains intact. As we drove the short distance from the nursery to Callander, I could do little more than shiver and snivel, deep in my own shame and self-pity—I’d scarcely slept the night before, after what I’d seen. But Lewis, undaunted, did his best to lighten the mood.

  “The perils of Christmas punch,” he said softly, pointing to a slumping company of snowmen in a farmer’s yard, much the worse for wear after the mild weather last week. I ma
naged a smile.

  Finally, just as we were pulling up outside my old home, he said: “Is everything okay, miss?”

  It wasn’t, of course, but I had to laugh. “‘Miss’?” I asked. “I thought we finally got past ‘miss.’”

  I think that made him blush, blush like the old Lewis, but he laughed as well. Then we sat quietly until I said I’d had a fitful sleep and was still feeling poorly. He nodded, and I worried for a moment that this would be that and I wouldn’t find a way to say that I would like to see him another time, when I was feeling better. There was an awkward pause, then we both spoke at once.

  “Would you and your father like to come around for tea?” I said. And he, in the same instant, said, “I’ve built a toboggan—do you think little Edith would want to test it out?”

  That made us laugh a second time, and suddenly things seemed as companionable as they’ve come to feel in our letters. He agreed he and his father would stop by on the twenty-fourth, which they did. I thought Mother would have a dozen questions for me about asking a young man around for tea—she did fix me with a surprised look when I mentioned the invitation. But when they came by yesterday and Father and Mr. Cartwright commandeered all conversation, Mother seemed chiefly preoccupied with making Christmas as perfect as possible for baby Edith, and she did. It was.

  December 27, 1938

  LEWIS CAME TO call for Edith and me yesterday, bringing the toy sled he’d fashioned out of wood, rope, and airplane remnants in his Montreal factory. How he managed to bring this contraption home to Callander on the train I’ll never know. Accompanying him on our sledding expedition was his brother’s little girl, Sheryl. She must be a year or two older than Edith, but the two of them got along famously, treating Lewis as their own personal Clydesdale and bidding him mercilessly to go faster, faster. It’s lucky he didn’t furnish them with a driving whip.