The Quintland Sisters(29)
December 14, 1935
DR. DAFOE DRESSED up as Santa for our early Christmas with the girls today, Fred snapping photo after photo. This year the girls weren’t the slightest bit put out by his costume. émilie marched over to him laughing and pointing, and when he stooped down to lift her into his arms, she reached up and tugged his beard clean off. Half of Fred’s pictures will show all of them gathered around the world’s most famous physician inexplicably dressed as an elf. Annette, Yvonne, and Cécile then trundled over, and it was dog pile on le Docteur while Marie scrambled to join in. “Doh-Doh,” they call him, Yvonne and Annette managing “Le-Doh-Doh.” The doctor loves it. He is a different man than he was before the quintuplets were born—less of a fuddy-duddy and more comfortable with being the center of attention, even when he pretends he doesn’t like it.
The real stars are the babies. You see them everywhere now, and not just in the newspapers. They are pictured in advertisements for Bee Hive corn syrup, Lysol, Quaker Oats, and Palmolive. Mrs. Fangel did the artwork for many of these adverts, but I think she needs to pay us another visit to see how much the girls have changed. There is one out now for Pears baby powder, and the drawing of the babies does not look much like them at all.
December 24, 1935
BACK IN MY little bedroom in Callander, or what used to be my bedroom. Father and Mother have redone the room completely—new drapes and shelving, a crib and change table, a fresh coat of egg-yellow paint on the walls, and all my silly girlhood things packed away in the attic. They will keep my bed, they’ve assured me, and I’m welcome to come and visit anytime. But I can see that they feel, as I do, that I’ve flown the nest and it is now being feathered anew for the little one due any day.
Mother is tired and slow on her feet, but she otherwise looks better than I have seen her in years. Christmas is always a terribly busy time at the post office, but Father, too, seems to be brimming with energy. How strange for them to be repeating this process, so many years later. They don’t seem to see it that way at all. I’m hoping the baby will come while I have these few days off from the nursery so I can be of some help to Mother. Otherwise I will have to ask to take additional time off, and I’m loath to do so.
It was the younger Cartwright who drove me back to my mother and father’s tonight. Lewis Cartwright has ferried me home or back several times now. He is a good foot taller than his father, well over six feet, with gangly limbs that seem to struggle to stay still, twitching the way a bird on a branch will shift and reshuffle its feathers. It is quite something to watch him fold himself behind the wheel of the truck. He’s a very kind young man, I can tell, but it is simply impossible for me to imagine him as a teacher in front of an unruly class. His father, Neil Cartwright, could talk a leg off a donkey, but Lewis needs to be cajoled by his father before he’ll utter a word, and, even then, he sometimes has a hint of a stutter and speaks so softly, it’s hard to catch what he’s saying. When it is just him and me in the truck, there is little in the way of conversation. Our drive to Callander tonight was entirely silent apart from a few pleasantries at the outset. As we drove along, I’m sure I could hear the first snowflakes landing on the cab. How utterly different from my noisy days in the nursery.
Lewis hurried around the side of the truck and opened the door for me after we’d pulled up at my house. “Merry Christmas, Mr. Cartwright, and to your father and family too,” I said, stepping to the street. He gave me a warm smile, which really changes the look of his anxious face. “Y-you too, Miss Trimpany,” he said, bobbing his head. Then he stooped to gather the bag at my feet and accompanied me up the walk.
December 27, 1935
I HAVE A baby sister. Edith Lorraine Trimpany, born today at 8:00 A.M. She is perfect. At eight pounds, three ounces, she seems huge to me—roughly the same as the combined weight of émilie, Marie, and Cécile at birth. She has a dusting of flaxen hair and pale blue eyes like mine, but no bright red blotch staining half of her face. She is beautiful.
1936
January 31, 1936
I think we will have to cut down the babies’ afternoon nap soon. Half the time Annette and Yvonne don’t sleep more than an hour, and Yvonne has learned how to climb out of her crib and will bustle around to visit her sisters, fetching them items requested from the toy box. Yesterday I went in to wake them and Annette, Cécile, Em, and Marie were standing in their cribs in high good humor, taking turns tossing their dolls to the floor while Yvonne trotted around fetching them.
During their naptime today, Dr. Dafoe summoned Ivy and me to his office, ushered both of us into seats, and shut the door behind us.
When he was seated again behind his desk, he folded his neat hands together and fixed us with a serious frown. He cleared his throat. “What I have to tell you, I must ask that you keep confidential.”
He paused, looking from Ivy’s face to mine until we both nodded to show we understood.
“M. Dionne is using his position on the board of guardians to make certain demands pertaining to the quintuplets, many of which are frankly ridiculous.” Dr. Dafoe snorted. “They are insisting that all staff be French. Both of you, of course, are perfectly bilingual and I would ask that you continue to speak to the girls in both French and English, with the caveat that it would be prudent, in my opinion, to speak only French to the girls when their parents are visiting.