The Quintland Sisters(37)

It’s dreadful knowing that our every action there is on display. The babies don’t realize a thing, thank goodness, and have been delighted with their new playground. It has a swing set and teeter-totter, a large sandbox with every shape of pail and trowel, the wading pool, a large grassy area, and a track around the perimeter, where they can push and pull their vast collection of wagons and wheeled toys. As for us nurses, we feel like fish in a fishbowl although no one is the slightest bit interested in us; they only have eyes for the little girls. I’ve spent my whole life with people gaping at my birthmark, and it seemed to be pulsing like a beacon my first few days in the public playground. It has gotten easier, although this heat is making my whole body flush as red as a strawberry; it’s hard to know what is self-consciousness and what are the first signs of heatstroke.

The observation gallery is open for only half an hour at a time, but we’ve started to see long lineups forming hours before the doors open. Both of the entrances to the gallery have been fitted with a turnstile with an automatic counter built in: today’s tally was 6,039 visitors over the course of the two showings. Nurse No?l has taken it upon herself to coax the girls to toddle around after a ball or play a game of copycat with her. Nurse Nicolette on the other hand tends to sulk on a bench in the shadows unless one of the girls summons her or needs her help. She is still on civil terms with the Dionnes and visits the farmhouse quite regularly although she’s tight-lipped about her visits. What I wouldn’t give to be able to take a peek into Elzire Dionne’s kitchen and see how it’s changed. I know M. Dionne is driving a new car, even though he still uses his truck on the farm. Ivy says M. Dionne receives five hundred dollars a month for being an official guardian for the quintuplets, even though he has never shown up for a single one of their meetings. That means the other guardians never received his approval to move ahead with this new playground.

I can’t write another word. I’m too hot and irritable. I hope the heat breaks soon.


July 10, 1936–11:30 P.M.

AN UPDATE—IVY KNOCKED at my door about an hour ago. I wasn’t asleep. It’s too hot to sleep. She slipped into my room and whispered, “Grab your robe,” then ducked back out into the corridor.

We tiptoed through the nursery, out the back door, then kept to the shadow of the fence as we crossed the old playground, or the “private” playground, as we call it now. We know all of the guards quite well, but what on earth would we tell them if one of them came across us sneaking through the property in our nightclothes in the middle of the night?

Ivy produced a key from her housecoat and unlocked the gate that leads into the public observation playground, then locked it again once we were inside. The moon is merely a crescent tonight, peering down on us with a puckish, sideways smile as if it approved of the giggle fit that overcame us. The stars were as bright as I’ve ever seen, so many of them closely packed together that they seemed to smudge the black sky with silver, dusting the playground with a milky glow. The air tonight must be twenty degrees cooler than it had been during the day, but you could still feel it pulsing out of the walls of the enclosure and rising out of the earth itself.

I’d pulled my robe over my nightdress when I left my room, but the layers were unbearable. I could feel perspiration prickling on my back. I turned to Ivy to ask what on earth she had up her sleeve, but she had vanished. Squinting, I could just make her out by the wading pool at the other end of the yard, where the observation hall cast a long shadow over the grass. I skirted the yard on the tar track to join her. While I’d been ogling the night sky, she had been unhooking the canvas top from the wading pool and wrestling with the hose to top up the water.

Cranking the faucet closed, she bent over the pool to stir the water with her hand.

“Oh yes,” she said. “I’ve been thinking about this for hours.”

Before I could say anything, she was shrugging out of her housecoat and had whisked her nightdress over her head.

“Ivy!” I squeaked, my hand involuntarily slapping against my mouth to dampen the sound, wheeling around to look at the windows circling the yard.

“Shhhhh, Em!”

Ivy was stepping over the edge of the pool and into the black water. I could hear her breath catch as she sank herself down. With her head below the rim of the pool, all I could spy was a flash of her white breasts beneath the water.

“What if someone sees you?” I asked, keeping my voice as soft as I could.

“Sees me? Sees us, you mean! Aren’t you coming in?”

I could sense rather than see her limbs undulating in the shallow pool. “This is heaven,” she murmured. “Heaven.”

All I could think of was the long row of windows. What if people could still get into the observation area? What if the guards patrolled it? What if they could see Ivy, naked as the day she was born?

Ivy read my mind. “No one can see us, Em. Think of it. The doors to the observation area are locked religiously outside of visiting hours, and they’ve built this place so that you can’t see in from anywhere else on the property. It’s perfect. Now get in here.”

I was slick with sweat in my robe and nightgown, and the sound of the water lapping at the edge of the pool was irresistible. Stepping back toward the wall, where the shadows were darkest, I slipped out of my robe. Then I took a deep breath, tugged my thin nightie over my head, and stepped clumsily into the pool.