The Quintland Sisters(52)
“You can’t be braving all this commotion on foot, Miss Trimpany,” he chided. “It wouldn’t be safe for a lady on her own, battling the crowds of Quintland.”
The public viewing time had ended more than ninety minutes earlier, but the parking lot beside the farmhouse was still teeming with cars of every model and shade. Visitors were milling around the troughs newly refilled with Dionne souvenir pebbles, swatting at the blackflies, and snapping pictures of the farmhouse, the nursery, and everything else in between.
Our truck attracted no small amount of attention when the guard opened the second gate to let us pull out. Mr. Cartwright senior waved gamely at the tourists, but I kept my gaze fixed straight ahead, my birthmark—I hoped—in shadow. For as far as I could see, a line of cars inched in the direction of Callander, the tired faces of children pressed against the rear windows.
I had heard the other staff talking about an Algonquin chief who had pitched his tepee across from the makeshift carpentry that passed for a tourist information hut on a corner of the Dionne property. Sure enough, a regal Indian sat cross-legged on a red blanket set back from the roadside, poker-faced in full regalia, the breeze stirring his headdress. A large sign on the ground beside him read: PROFESSIONAL PHOTOS: 50 CENTS. OWN CAMERA: 25 CENTS. A group of older boys, their shirttails untucked, appeared to be heckling the man, trying to get a smile out of him, while others inspected his tent and queued to get their pictures taken. Next to the man was a long line of wheeled carts, tables, and makeshift stands: local folk selling homemade preserves, candy bars, cigarettes, hard-boiled eggs, folding fans, buttermilk biscuits, harmonicas, postcards, Cracker Jack, ashtrays, sunhats, tea cozies, soda pop, embroidery, candy apples, whirligigs, and lemon meringue pie by the slice. A jowly man in full tails and a top hat was pacing back and forth through the traffic, bellowing at the top of his lungs, “Ladies and gentlemen, just fifteen more minutes until feeding time, fifteen minutes! Step up and see Rupert the Bear tuck into his supper!” On a wooden platform wobbling over a patch of scrub brush was the sorriest-looking brown bear I’ve ever seen, scrawny and bedraggled, his coat dull, lumbering listlessly at the limit of his short chain. A youngster in a sailor suit dangling a blue balloon on a string stood transfixed, his eyes glued to the bear while his mother tugged vainly at his sleeve. The air smelled of dust and automobiles mixed with fairground smells—hay and horse, popcorn, hot dogs, and cotton candy. Despite the warmth of the evening, I cranked my window closed.
As we pulled past the veranda surrounding one of Oliva Dionne’s souvenir shops, I spied Nurse Dubois—Sylvie—leaning out over the railing with a slim man, smartly dressed, his hat pulled low. She was sipping from a pop bottle through a long red straw, and, as we crept closer, she pointed at something on the street and the two of them started laughing, Sylvie letting her head fall back, her bosom rising and falling. The man turned away before I could get a proper look at him, ducking into the shadow of the porch, but it seemed I could hear her booming laugh from inside the cab of the truck, despite the distance and the noise all around us, our windows closed tight. I waited for her companion to step forward again into the light, but he didn’t. I’ve come to like Sylvie, but we don’t have the kind of friendship where I could imagine asking her about the man on the porch, the way I might have done with Ivy. Although I’m curious, I admit. I twisted my head to look through the rear window at the busy rooftop refreshment stand at the Midwives’ Pavilion, a line of tourists curling limply away from the stairway. They were waiting, I presumed, for a table to open up. Lewis, seated in the back of the truck, was watching them, too, one hand grasping the rail, the other holding his weathered hat to his head, half an inch from my own on the other side of the glass.
“It really is something,” I murmured.
“That it is, miss,” Mr. Cartwright agreed cheerfully. “That it is.”
June 15, 1937
A TELEGRAM FROM Ivy today saying she’s canceling her trip home in order to accept an offer to speak at a nursing school in California! She says she will travel by both train and airplane to get there. I can’t imagine being so brave. I’m desperately disappointed not to see her, but perhaps she’ll have time later in the summer.
June 16, 1937
PUBLIC OBSERVATION HOURS were officially extended, so the quintuplets now play in the observation area for a full hour, twice a day, at 9:30 and 2:30. No one sees me—they only have eyes for the girls. The crowds are astonishing. The lineup for the morning viewing now starts before seven-thirty.
M. and Mme. Dionne came today during the viewing hours and insisted on sitting in the play area with all of us. It’s the first time M. Dionne has done this, although Mme. Dionne has been coming off and on for several weeks. My guess is she likes the public to see her with her famous babies, although she never joins the girls in their play. Instead she sits heavily in her chair, fanning herself in the shade, calling out to the girls and trying to get them to come and sit with her, when it’s clear they are happy with their various games and projects.
M. Dionne, meanwhile, spent every minute tugging at his ridiculous ears and frowning at the shadows moving behind the screens in the observation corridor. He bristled with anger when one of the girls ignored her mother and continued with whatever she was playing at. He seems to go out of his way to glare at me and snapped angrily at Miss Beaulieu, although whatever set him off, I’d missed. Nurse Dubois stood up from the sandbox, where she’d been watching Marie and Annette, and walked over to him and spoke with him quietly. The next minute, wouldn’t you know it—she actually had him smiling.