The Quintland Sisters(33)
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.