The Quintland Sisters(70)
I was staring at him, thinking of Ivy’s gossip, and I sensed he could feel my fretful gaze darting over his features. He sighed. “There’s been no talk of any more staff being fired, and none coming back either. Satisfied?” His face rearranged itself in the sunshine.
When I didn’t respond, he opened one eye again to meet my gaze, then sat up to look at me properly, tugging at the knot of his tie again as he did so. My fingers twitched as if they had a mind to reach out and help him put it straight.
“Most of the talk is about the girls’ trust fund, how it’s being spent, and what sort of time line might be required to build a new house, for the whole family—one that would accommodate the quintuplets and their staff.”
“But Dr. Dafoe told me—”
George waved a hand to stop me. “I know what you’re going to say. Don’t say it. I’m telling you what’s being discussed, not what’s going to happen. You’re a smart girl. The best thing you can do is stay out of the way.”
He stood and stooped to pick up his jacket, hooking an index finger under the collar and hanging it over one shoulder, like a man in a magazine. Then he stopped and, for a fleeting instant, rested his warm hand on the top of my head as he stepped to open the door. “Don’t worry about the wrong things, Emma,” he said. Then he went back inside.
I stayed on the steps for a long while, half my thoughts thrumming alongside my racing heart, the ghost of his touch still tingling on my head. The rest of my brain was digesting George’s words. The very idea of the girls moving with the rest of the Dionnes to a bigger house, with all of their nurses and teachers in tow, the doctor making his daily visits—this, I knew, would never happen. I, for one, would never make that move. But Ivy’s words have stuck with me: the girls can’t stay here forever. And nor can I.
The outside world knows so little of what’s really going on behind these walls. They lap up Dr. Dafoe’s weekly column and assume that’s the merry life we’re living. And the funny thing is, these days, I’m not sure I know what life I’m living either.
May 22, 1938 (King Features Syndicate Inc.)
* * *
DR. DAFOE’S COLUMN ON THE QUINTUPLETS AND THE CARE OF YOUR CHILDREN
By Allan Roy Dafoe, Personal Physician to the Dionne Quintuplets
Watching the five Dionne Quintuplets, especially when they are really going places, is too much of a job for any one nurse. In fact, it often takes our two nurses, backed up by the teacher, to keep track of them all and see that they don’t get into any mischief.
Not that the children are given to being naughty or annoying: they are just fell [sic] of animal spirits. When I arrive at the nursery in the morning, the whole five charge at me. They weigh over forty pounds apiece, and when they’re done I feel as though I had been mauled by the Cornell line and backfield.
A few months ago, émilie got herself dressed to go out a bit ahead of the others. She stood around for a moment or two, waiting for the others, and then she announced she was tired of waiting and was going out. As she went out the door, the nurse in charge told her to stay in the yard.
Well, émilie stayed in the yard for a moment or two and then decided that Tony, one of the police dogs, must be lonely. So she opened the gate, left the yard, and went over to Tony’s doghouse to pay him a visit. Since she openly disobeyed the nurse’s instructions, she was told to go back to the house and stay there for five minutes before she came out again. This is all the punishment the Quints ever get—being put in a room for solitary confinement for a few minutes.
The nurse turned her mind to other things for a minute or two, but when she looked again, émilie didn’t seem to be at all chastened by her solitary. She was at the window and seemed to be having a great time.
So the nurse went in to investigate and as she tiptoed into the room where émilie was supposed to be doing penance, she found the little girl with enough snowballs to make a fair-sized snowman. She was having a whale of a time, skidding them along the floor and watching them bounce off the baseboards when they hit the wall. When she investigated further, the nurse found that the four Quints outside in the yard had taken pity on émilie and since she couldn’t play with them in the snow, they would bring the snow to her. So they had opened the window and were making snowballs and handing them in to her through the window.
émilie stayed for the mopping up process and said over and over again that it was too bad that the snow had made all the mess. “But really, émilie didn’t make the mess, did she, Nurse?” she asked again and again, a twinkle in her eye.
? 1939 King Features Syndicate, Inc. Used with permission.
May 28, 1938
Happy birthday to my beloved Annette, Yvonne, Cécile, Marie, and émilie. You are so big and strong and kind and beautiful, you are breaking my heart.
M. and Mme. Dionne and the rest of the brood came over for a birthday party, and Dr. Dafoe stayed away. It felt more like an army occupation than a festive occasion. Maman and Papa Dionne gave the girls a big wooden train with a locomotive, a passenger car, and a caboose. The older Dionne boys swiftly commandeered it and were charging all over the playroom while their sisters watched in awe. Of course, they’ve never once seen a train in person, let alone been in one themselves. Daniel sent the train careening along the floor to the circle where the girls were sitting quietly, and the locomotive struck émilie in the knee, not hard, but it caught her by surprise. She sprang up, her eyes flooding with tears.