The Quintland Sisters(97)
I have two weeks’ leave over Christmas, so there should be plenty of time for a visit. And as to your bold question: no. Mr. Sinclair has become like a brother to me here, and I’m grateful for his friendship.
Yours truly,
Emma
Dafoe Hospital and Nursery
Callander, ON
*
January 2, 1939
11 Rue Saint Ida
Montreal, Quebec
Dear Lewis,
Thank you again for taking us tobogganing. It was exactly what I needed to shake off the winter blues, and Edith talked of little else for the rest of my visit. That’s no mean task, upstaging Santa Claus.
I’m back at the nursery again tonight, and much to my gratification the girls swarmed me like a hive of honeybees and tried to plant as many sticky kisses on me as possible. Annette almost popped my shoulder out of its socket trying to climb me like a rope ladder.
After you left, Ivy and Fred came to town so Fred could pack up the rooms he’s let ever since the girls were just a few months old. It feels like the end of an era, Fred moving away.
Ivy had more extraordinary, albeit thirdhand, gossip, about Dr. Dafoe, the guardians, and the Dionnes. She told me that Mr. Munro, the man in charge of nursery finances, heard that a reporter at the Star got a tip that the police had investigated M. Dionne on a complaint of seduction and illicit connection, brought forward by the parents of a girl who was helping at the farmhouse when the babies were born. According to this anonymous source, which the reporter was never able to verify, police didn’t press charges because of the intense media scrutiny the farmhouse was facing at the time.
Meanwhile, Mr. Munro himself has accused M. Dionne of hiring a private detective to prove that Dr. Dafoe and Mr. Munro are embezzling funds from the girls. I simply can’t believe this. Mr. Munro—you must remember him: a lanky, older gentleman with a white, shaggy mustache and a head like a mop—seems to be absolutely scrupulous about everything, and is careful to keep me updated about the payments I receive for my drawings and paintings. But according to Ivy, Mr. Munro has been unable to provide certain documents and says that these went missing when his home was burgled, a break-and-enter, he claims, that was orchestrated by M. Dionne.
Good gracious. It must be a measure of my cloistered little life or my winter-addled mind that I’m stooping to all this tittle-tattle. I sound worse than Marguerite! Promise me you’ll throw this letter on the fire when you’re done.
Yours truly,
Emma
Dafoe Hospital and Nursery
Callander, ON
*
February 10, 1939
11 Rue Saint Ida
Montreal, Quebec
Dear Lewis,
Your letter caught me off guard: I hadn’t even thought of applying to another art college or even to Mrs. Fangel’s school in New York, for that matter. It’s easier to imagine staying right where I am, continuing to care for the girls with the freedom to paint when and what I choose.
If only I knew what the future holds for the girls, and for me—whether my place is here with them indefinitely or whether the Dionnes will oust me the first chance they get. Ivy has always nettled me with questions about my “plans,” and I have never had an answer. It’s like bumping around in a dark room groping for a match. I can’t picture the quintuplets “all grown up” and living a life outside the nursery any more than I can picture that for myself. And what an odd expression that is: picturing yourself. I’ve been dabbling with a self-portrait, just for the challenge, and the fruits of this labor have been laughably bad. What does that say about me, I wonder: that I am completely incapable of drawing a reasonable likeness of my own face? Someone I recognize as myself? Or worse, that I fundamentally don’t know who I am or what I should be.
Mr. Munro was at the nursery last month and sat me down to explain how I’m being paid for my latest paintings. I hadn’t realized I would be paid a commission each time the same picture was used. I have mixed feelings about all this. I know these advertisements bring in much-needed funds for the girls, but they also keep the girls front and center, don’t they? In any case, it seems I have a little nest egg for my own shadowy future, whatever it holds.
Yours truly,
Emma
Dafoe Hospital and Nursery
Callander, ON
*
March 20, 1939
11 Rue Saint Ida
Montreal, Quebec
Dear Lewis,
I expect you’ve gone up in your plane and come back safe and sound or I would have read about it in the papers. Next time I’d much prefer you just told me after you’ve returned to earth in one piece.
As you’ve no doubt heard, the girls will now be traveling to Toronto to meet the King and Queen. They are excited beyond words, but what on earth will they make of the ragged world beyond the gates? The rest of us are ill at ease, partly because this abrupt change of plans seems to have come about through some crafty manipulation by M. Dionne against the wishes of Dr. Dafoe, who ended up looking a fool. The doctor has always insisted that it wouldn’t be safe for the quintuplets to leave the premises, not even to cross the road to visit their brothers and sisters in the house where they were born. The lethal germs of the outside world would be too much for their delicate constitutions, not to mention the constant threat of kidnappers, blackmailers, and barren couples poised to snatch one of our precious five and keep her as their own. Fear and precaution have been the code we’ve lived by for nearly five years, so to watch Dr. Dafoe now waving them aside like a puff of pipe smoke just because he’s been granted an audience with the Royals has been, well, a little unnerving. Everything seems on the verge of crumbling down. It’s dawning on me that all these rules, walls, and fences may not have been for keeping danger out, but for locking us within. And who knows what we’ll find when the doors swing open and we stumble from our cells, blinking in the light.