The Quintland Sisters(26)
She brought paints and pastels to the nursery, but ended up using only her pastels during the visit. The quintuplets are so busy, clambering all over one another in pursuit of whatever toy they aren’t holding at that moment, or crawling over to Mrs. Fangel and trying to snatch at her supplies. None of us could have gotten them to sit still long enough to be painted.
I should have expected it, but didn’t. When Dr. Dafoe was introducing Mrs. Fangel to the nurses, Ivy opened her big mouth and told her that I am also an artist and have been drawing the quintuplets since birth.
“Emma, you should show Mrs. Fangel what they looked like when they were born,” Ivy said.
I was mortified. I mumbled something about art being a hobby I don’t have much time for and was hoping to leave it at that.
To my surprise, Dr. Dafoe chimed in and suggested that I show my scribble book to Mrs. Fangel in his office when she was taking a break from her sketching, so there was no way for me to wriggle out of it.
Mrs. Fangel was so kind. She took her time leafing through my sketches, particularly the early ones.
“They were so, so tiny, weren’t they?” she said, her finger hovering over the page as if tracing the lines I’d drawn. “You’ve really captured something here,” she said later. It was one of my sketches of émilie and Marie curled around one another in the clunky old incubator. “You’ve caught their vulnerability and otherworldliness, haven’t you? You make us yearn for them, but also sense that we can’t quite touch them, they’re so frail.”
She looked up at me. I was blushing terribly and did so even more deeply when I saw her gaze flicker over my birthmark.
“Did you ever consider art school, Emma?”
I didn’t know what to say, because before we’d moved north, I’d longed for little else. Living up here, where prospects are so few, I had at last made peace with letting that dream go. Mrs. Fangel said that she’d attended the Boston School of Fine Arts, then Cooper Union in New York.
“There are many international students, you know,” she said while I was trying to untie my tongue. I finally managed to say that I’d just finished a practical nursing diploma in North Bay and was hoping to stay on as a nurse at the Dafoe Nursery.
She nodded and didn’t say anything more for a moment, instead opening my scribble book and leafing through it again. When she spoke she said, “Have you ever used pastel or watercolors?”
“Not since school,” I replied. “And that was many years ago, when we lived in Ottawa.”
She closed my book and stood, handing it back to me.
“Let’s go paint the girls, shall we?”
For the next two hours, Mrs. Fangel let me sit at her easel and showed me how to mix my colors and choose my brush. She taught me angles and strokes and how to shadow my shapes for depth and light. Then, when it was time for her to leave, she gave me her card and said I should keep in touch.
“I’d love to see how you get on,” she said and shook my hand.
But that wasn’t all. She gathered up her easel and paints and pastels, then turned to me and said, “I have more supplies than I know what to do with; you won’t mind if I donate these to the Dafoe Nursery, will you?” She gave me a wink.
This time my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth, and it was all I could do to choke out a thank-you. I thought I was going to cry.
Ivy put her arm around my shoulders and gave me a squeeze and said she’d make sure I put them to good use. Even the Captain seemed pleased for me, which is saying something.
It’s late now. Past midnight, I’m sure. My eyes are trying to go to sleep on me before I’ve even finished writing this down. What a day! What a day.
June 1, 1935
THE CAPTAIN HAS quit. Nurse de Kiriline has quit!
It simply doesn’t make sense. We’d celebrated the quintuplets’ “real” birthday on Tuesday, this time a quiet and private affair. I remember noticing the Captain’s look of peace and contentment. The past year has aged her more than any of us; the lines etched into her lean face are deeper and more numerous, surely, than they were when she first arrived at the farmhouse last year. But there is something softer about her too. I watched her lifting little Cécile out of her chair and holding her high in the air, Cécile gurgling happily. The Captain’s expression was the same as I feel on my own face these days. Cracked wide open with joy and pride and wonder. I know she has borne the brunt of the tense interactions with the formidable Mme. Dionne in recent weeks, but she is tough as nails.
The quintuplets’ birthday was front-page news in all the papers, I’m told. The Captain has a scrapbook where she has been collecting many of these stories, with friends and colleagues in different cities sending her clippings when they see them. Who will collect all these for us now, I wonder.
Ivy says Nurse de Kiriline and Dr. Dafoe spoke in private after the quiet celebration we had for the girls’ birthday—their real birthday. The Dionnes came over for cake and tea, the parents as well as the children, and the atmosphere was better, I thought, than at the big party last week with all the reporters and government bigwigs gathered around for the photos. The Captain has been very strict with the other Dionne children in the past—they are so rough-and-tumble, compared to the quintuplets. But she was very kind to them at the birthday, I thought, serving them their cake and giving them little gifts of their own. Mme. Dionne is pregnant again, having never really lost the weight she gained when she was carrying the quintuplets. She is now as wide as an icebox. After tea, she needed help to rise from her chair. I simply can’t imagine bearing a single child, let alone spending my every adult year carrying baby after baby. It gives me shivers.