The Quintland Sisters(71)
Her mother was submerged in the settee within arm’s length of the girls, but émilie wheeled around, looking frantic, then darted over to me, her hands out, sobbing. I lifted her up, rubbing her back.
“Oh, pumpkin, you’re fine. You just got a little fright. Nothing too terrible.”
I glanced over her shoulder as I said it and saw the expressions on the faces of her parents. Maman Dionne’s face had puckered in pain at the sight of her daughter running to me in her moment of panic. Most days Mme. Dionne is fearsome, commanding her children this way and that, her thick arms jabbing the air. Other times, times like these, she’s like a balloon with a leak, her whole countenance falling and her face slack with longing. M. Dionne I could only glimpse in profile. His eyes were on his wife, but he was clearly seething, his funny red earlobe trembling like the snood of a turkey. Then he abruptly turned and glared at me so ferociously I had to turn my face to the side. I whispered, “Let’s go see if Nurse Trimpany can find you a plaster, shall we?” Then I hurried Em from the room.
After that, I made myself scarce. I sent Em back to play with her sisters, and the Dionnes left shortly thereafter. Only later did I get all five girls to myself in the private playground outside. “This is my birthday gift to you,” I said and showed them how to make daisy chains, threading the tiny flowers together through tiny splits in the stems. Their little fingers are too clumsy for this kind of work, so I set them picking the flowers and bringing them to me. They all insisted on wearing their daisy necklaces to bed, which I permitted. Imagine what Miss Beaulieu would have said? Or Dr. Blatz? They will wake tomorrow to find them wilted and brown and I’ll have to explain that nothing beautiful lasts forever.
June 1, 1938
MISS ROUSSELLE IS leaving as soon as they can find a replacement this summer. Score a point for M. Dionne.
June 7, 1938
I’M BACK FROM a day at home with Mother and Edith, but I didn’t spend the night. In fact, I managed to miss the paying guests who stayed in the rented room last night by arriving after they’d departed, then slipped away before the next couple arrived. It’s hard these days, going home—it feels more and more as if I’m merely a guest myself or, worse, an inconvenience. Back at the nursery, I learned I’d missed a visit by Shirley Temple! On my only day off, of course. She was given a private audience with the girls. (Private, that is, plus photographers.)
“She even took a Quint-stone,” George said and winked at me.
“Isn’t Shirley Temple a little young to be worried about fertility?”
(I can’t quite believe I said that. Honestly, sometimes I wonder who I’m turning into.)
“Ah, but she will soon be all grown tall!” he sang in a chirping, childish voice, marching and swinging his arms beside him, bungling all the lyrics. “She’s got to think what she will want when she’s not quite as small.”
He makes me laugh, George. He really does.
June 9, 1938
THE NEW NURSE on staff is Louise Corriveau. She is dark and sallow with the downy beginnings of a true mustache, which I have to keep myself from staring at. She’s conscious of it, clearly—her fingers are constantly fluttering above her upper lip. Under her bushy brows, she has a startled, blinking look that makes me worry she may not last any longer here than the others. For now, she and Miss Rousselle (who will be with us for only a few more weeks) are more than happy to take the girls into the public playground without me. The Dionnes, either Maman on her own or Papa as well, are coming over every day, particularly in the afternoons, which are already scorching. We are desperately in need of rain and the dry farms even more so. The girls spend most of the hour in the wading pool, which I suppose is not quite as much fun for the tourists. They’d prefer to see them on the swings or riding their tricycles—something that brings them closer to the windows, I’m sure.
Meanwhile the movie crews have been here once again, this time bringing a litter of cocker spaniel puppies for one of the scenes with Mr. Hersholt. The girls were terrified at first, Cécile the only one bold enough to reach out a cautious hand when “Dr. Luke” first proffered one of the wriggling pups. But they swiftly fell in love with their new pets, lugging them around the lawn, rolling with them in the grass, and trying to “nurse” them with baby bottles.
“If I pick a booger from my nose, the puppy licks it!” cried Annette, elated by the discovery and eagerly teaching her sisters to replicate the experiment.
They will be crushed tomorrow when we have to tell them that the puppies were here only for the cameras and won’t be coming back.
June 10, 1938
THE STRESS AND the workload are getting to George, I’d say. He’s put on a bit of weight with all the desk work he’s been doing, the rest of him growing into that broad swimmer’s chest, I suppose. It suits him nicely, softening his face a bit. I’d done a little line drawing of the girls plucking daisies in the private yard, and I’d planned to give it to George, if I could summon the nerve. Nothing special, just a little something he could tack on the wall above his desk to cheer him up or inspire his next column.
Today George was hunched and frowning over a stack of letters. Dr. Dafoe is away in New York again, giving another speech.
“What has you glowering today, George?” I asked as I poked a head around the office door. He looked up and rubbed his face with one hand and waved me inside with the other.