Notes From the Underwire: Adventures From My Awkward and Lovely Life

by Quinn Cummings

  In my mind, my peers were an exasperating mixture of worldly and naïve. Owing to their parents’ choices, my schoolmates had a deep understanding of California divorce and custodial laws, the exact make and model of the German sports car they were expecting on their sixteenth birthdays, and the most creative off-label uses for certain prescription drugs. But when it came to actual world events—which is to say anything that didn’t specifically improve their chances of breaking into the Ivy League—they were as sheltered as nuns. Their job was to do well in school and get accepted into the kind of college that would make their extremely successful parents forget they had taken seven years to graduate from State.

  One particular classmate—I’ll call her Debra—produced in me the sensation of chewing on tinfoil while listening to an extended club mix of nails on a chalkboard. And that was in my best of moods. Debra came with a list of disagreeable personality traits, and topping the list was the fact that she was the least intellectually curious person I had ever met. Of course, this also meant she had a near-perfect aptitude for excelling at high school. The teachers would speak and her brain would tranquilly and unquestioningly record every single fact, flagging each data point to spit back verbatim at such future time of the teachers’ choosing. When asked her opinions on a more general topic, Debra would reprise the teacher’s most recent lecture, right down to the “Ums” and the “I means,” to which the teacher would beam back in pure pedagogical joy. Her mastery of the high school academic game only confirmed my suspicions that a properly socialized African gray parrot could make it to Brown.

  One day during my mother’s third month of chemo, when her hair was completely gone and her skin was the color of a saltine, I was sitting in the cafeteria eating lunch when Debra came flying through the door, sobbing uncontrollably. A few classmates, alert to the pleasures of drama by proxy, ran to her side. Debra remained frozen in the doorway, wailing. Finally, she managed to force out a few words.

  “I…got…an…eighty-…nine!”

  The sobs began anew. It took a few minutes, but everyone in a three-mile radius of the cafeteria finally got the full story. Our class had taken an English test. For the first time in Debra’s life, she had scored less than a ninety. While the rest of us were eating lunch, she had been begging the teacher for the extra point to protect her sterling average. She had even offered to do another report for extra credit—she just wanted one point—but the teacher was resolute. Debra’s academic record now included a B-plus, and it was going to stay that way until her dying day.

  Freshly outraged, she blubbered, “Why do the worst things always happen to me? I am so unlucky. This is the worst thing that could ever happen to anyone.”

  I finished chewing my apple. Debra’s thick, waist-length hair flipped from side to side as she bemoaned her awful fate. Even through her tears, her face was round and smooth and vibrant with health. I felt a sudden pressing need not to hear her voice anymore. I got up to leave and was forced to sidle around her and her support coven still clustered near the doorway. Seeing a new person next to her, and assuming I was there to provide more comfort, she turned to me and moaned, “Oh, Quinn, you don’t know how easy you have it.”

  “Quinn, why did you choke Debra?”

  The vice principal had a year-long relationship with me, and it was nearly all bad. She liked the sensitive kids. If you were a girl who wrote bad poetry or cut yourself, or a boy who felt your best in grandmother’s long-line girdle, she couldn’t find enough ways to love you. She’d eat lunch in her office with you. She’d hold your cigarettes during school hours. She’d help stage your intervention. She just adored the big loud messes who then pulled it together and got into a reputable second-tier college and became active, generous alumni. She didn’t like students who were also actors. She told me the first time we met that she had voted against my attending the school. Oddly enough, the fact that I had also voted against my attending her school didn’t bond us, nor did my observing out loud that she liked actors well enough when these actors were parents and they were writing big checks for the scholarship fund. By the time I answered her question, “What is your problem with authority figures?” by saying “I have no problem with authority figures when I have some respect for the person wielding the authority,” she was counting the minutes until I screwed up big time. Having a star student come streaking into her office claiming I tried to kill her, with five eyewitnesses corroborating that they thought they saw something… This was a gift from heaven. She leaned back in her chair and squinted at me.

  After a long moment, I replied sullenly, “It was a mistake.”

  Which, truly, it was. We were too close in the doorway for me to do what I wanted to do, which was to pull her stupid healthy hair so hard that it separated from her stupid healthy scalp and stopped mocking me. So I went for her neck, thinking that if her lungs didn’t have any air, she’d at least stop whining.

  Debra, pointing to nonexistent marks on her neck, wailed, “She could have killed me!”

  I thought, No. I have small hands and my position provided very little leverage. Had I wanted you dead, I would have doctored your Yoplait with antifreeze and wiped off the fingerprints. The mere fact that such an answer had come so easily to me meant it probably wasn’t going to strengthen my case.

  “We’re probably going to expel you for this,” the vice principal said, her serious tone at odds with the glee snapping in her eyes. “But first, I want to get your mother in here.”

  My mind raced. My mother didn’t need this. My mother was currently at her office, vomiting and trying to work. If my mother showed up at school in her beige wig and her gray skin this nitwit functionary would know she was sick, the secret would be out, and it would be my fault.

  I turned to Debra. I worked up some tears. I sniffled, “God, Debra, I’m so sorry. I was just trying to goof around with you. I knew you had lived through this nightmare and I just…” I sobbed a bit more, for emphasis, “just wanted to make you laugh by roughhousing. It was all just a terrible, thoughtless mistake.”

  I wiped my eyes and carried on a bit. Debra, puzzled at this turn of events, patted my hand. The vice principal played with her pen in a way that suggested she wanted a cigarette. Debra turned to the vice principal.

  “She just wanted to make me laugh by roughhousing,” she said sweetly. “It was all a terrible, thoughtless mistake.”

  Did I say I despised her mindless parroting of what people said to her? I was so very wrong. It was her best quality. The vice principal frowned. She could continue to prosecute me, but it wouldn’t work nearly as well without the victim’s tearful testimony. I smiled at Debra through my tears and hugged her, careful to avoid touching her neck or her hair. She packed up and went off to blindly excel in another class. I smiled slightly differently at the vice principal.

  “Is that it?” I asked.

  “For the moment,” she said, grudgingly. “Just…”

  She stopped. She had gone from nearly getting rid of me to sending me to fifth period with a late pass. She needed to warn me about something.

  “Just don’t touch people.”

  I picked up my backpack and leaned across the table. “Don’t worry,” I said, calmly. “I don’t plan on getting close to anyone.”

  Ask for Flaco

  ONE WEEKEND MORNING, I FOUND ALICE IN HER BEDROOM paging through a children’s book about the body. She said dreamily, “I’d like to see a heart.” Choosing the easy and obvious reply, I pointed at the page where she was reading and said, “There you go.”

  She shook her head and sighed, “No.” Then, tracing the aorta with her finger, she added, “In real life.” The voice was soft and dreamy, with a tone she might someday use to describe the captain of the water-polo team. But right now it seemed that Alice had a crush on the cardiovascular system. She then turned to me and said pleadingly, “Can I have a heart? A real human one? To dissect?”

  I answered with the classic, “We’ll see,” wh
ich is another way to say “I thank God for your ability to be distracted by the modern age.” What I failed to understand was that her need to see a human heart was a need to glance at our collective mortality in a small and measured way. This might be put aside briefly by Polly Pockets, but it certainly wasn’t going to be assuaged unless Ms. Pockets suddenly developed ventricles. Within weeks, I went from, “Medical school is chock-full of human hearts, so work on your multiplication tables” to “Amazon doesn’t have human hearts, sweetie. It seems like they should, and I’d get you one if they did, but they don’t; however, there’s always medical school so please go work on your multiplication tables.”

  One day, after Alice mentioned yet again how nice it would be to find a bloody human heart in her Easter basket, the inner voice that sends me off on idiotic adventures cleared its throat and spoke up. “You know,” it announced, “she’s showing an interest in science, and you’re shutting it down. Either you find her a heart to cut open or you risk her joining a squad of cheerleaders who trade sexual favors with science teachers in exchange for passing grades. Your choice.”

  I sat her down and told her the news. Yes, I would get her a real heart. She gasped and interlaced her fingers under her chin in a perfect display of innocent girlish delight, her mind racing toward hacking away at oozing crimson chambers. But, I continued, it couldn’t be a human heart. The federal government frowns on selling organs to civilians. Also, grave robbing. I was prepared to deliver either a pig’s heart or a cow’s heart. As her personal organ shopper, I noted that a pig’s heart was closer in size and configuration to a human heart but I advocated the cow’s heart, which, being larger, allowed for a wider margin of error.

  [Having seen Alice attempt to butter a hard roll and section an apple, I knew we needed all the margin we could get.]

  I figured I was now out of the woods, effort-wise. I was no longer facing a trip to some dimly lit alley behind the city morgue, exchanging unmarked bills with a loan-laden med student. Instead, I could head to the nearest butcher shop, sing out “One heart, please! And don’t stint on the veins!”, and we’d be set. I couldn’t remember ever seeing a heart at a butcher’s shop, but what do I know? I’m a vegetarian. I slither through that section of the market covering my eyes in the same way one does when passing certain magazine racks. In either case, we’re talking about body parts dedicated to bring pleasure to someone who isn’t me.

  Here’s a fact: When you ask for a cow’s heart at a butcher shop they look at you funny. They look at you funny in the upscale market where the lamb comes in its own tankini and matching flip-flops. They look at you funny in the neighborhood store whose street-facing sign boasts, “Tripe and Head Cheese—Half Off.” They look at you funny in places that specialize in the meats of certain countries known for the paucity of food and the culinary inventiveness they apply to every single part of the animal; cuisines with holiday menus that proudly include earlobe and hoof stew with a side of pan-roasted nose hair. Even these butchers looked at me funny after I asked for a cow’s heart. They typically said something that translated as “ew.” It seems not a single culture represented in Los Angeles, a place with more languages than the United Nations, ever looked at a cow’s heart and thought, Yum! All for me!

  What all these butchers did have in common was a belief that I celebrated some religion you hope your new neighbors don’t. A typical conversation went like this:

  “Do you have a cow’s heart?”

  “A what?”

  “A cow’s heart.”

  “A cow part? You mean, like a steak?”

  “H…eart. Heart. Big muscle, squeezes blood.”

  At which point, the butcher would lean over the counter and, to a person, cautiously inquire, “Is this for your church or something?”

  Yes, you caught me. I’m a high priestess in a blood-worshipping cult. You can spot us by our mom haircuts and sensible sedans. Until now, I assumed sheer suburban dreariness rendered me harmless on sight but this didn’t seem to work in the world of meat. I decided if Alice was so eager to see the dark recesses of a mammal’s heart she could damn well see the dark recesses of a butcher shop, so I invited her to join the quest. I figured that dragging a small child on my hunt for raw flesh would surely present a less sinister-looking front than my traveling alone. Wasn’t I just gloriously mistaken.

  Imagine you are a butcher. Now imagine a mother and a small child walk up to your counter, the mother prods her daughter slightly, and the little girl pipes up with, “Please, do you have a cow’s heart for sale?” while her mother beams down at her. The mother is either smiling in pride at her daughter’s good manners and articulation, or she is smiling in delightful anticipation of her child’s first blood ritual. Maybe if you explain to them that you don’t sell cow hearts, they will leave. Or maybe the mother will smile more broadly and announce, “What a lucky girl you are, your first blood shall be freshly spilled from a real live butcher!”

  Butchers tend to be physically large men. Alice’s and my request caused no fewer than three of them to dart for the back of their shops and refuse to come out.

  Finally, one butcher decided we weren’t dangerous as much as really, really strange. He took pity on us and told us the news: we might possibly be able to buy a bunch of cow’s hearts—which are sold to pet-food companies in volume—but not just one. Even if we did find someone who would sell us a single heart, it would be cut in half—a regulation that had something to do with mad cow disease. Had I been a reasonable person, I would have thought something like, Hey, after nearly two months of butcher-bothering, I’ll take what I can get. Half a heart is better than blah blah blah…

  Luckily, the part of my brain that usually runs things vetoed the smaller, more reasonable voice in my head, and insisted I get a whole cow’s heart or be found wanting in my child’s eyes. I pestered my new butcher buddy further and, after much pleading on my part and pointing to Alice and wailing pitifully, “It’s for the child. It’s for all our future cardiologists!”, he finally slid me a phone number. I was to call a butcher shop located in a traditionally Mexican neighborhood in Los Angeles and I was to ask for Flaco. I was to clarify that I didn’t want Flaquito, but Flaco—Flaquito would be of no help and might possibly turn us all in to the Food and Drug Administration. If I used the name of this butcher as a discreet reference, Flaco might possibly be able to hook me up. I thanked my new friend and promised to eat the paper containing Flaco’s phone number once the transaction was complete.

  It took several phone calls to actually connect with Flaco. They kept putting Flaquito on the phone, but I was too paranoid to leave my name and number. Finally, one Saturday morning, I got the elusive Flaco. The conversation went like this:

  QUINN: Is this Flaco?

  FLACO: You want Flaquito?

  QUINN: NO! I mean, no. Ronnie said to call you. He said he told you what I’m looking to buy.

  FLACO: Yeah, I can get it.

  QUINN: I don’t want it cut. You can get it uncut, right?

  FLACO: Yeah, for a little extra. Give me a week. Come to the store, around back, but don’t talk to anyone but me.

  Apparently, the government was only monitoring phone calls for terrorist activities that week and not interested in major drug trafficking because, so far, no team of machine-gun toting federal agents has broken into my house.

  It was late February when Alice first indicated a need for a heart to touch and call her very own. By August her passion remained undimmed. I decided not to tell her about our rendezvous with Flaco until the very morning of the pickup; I suspected that if you’re at ballet class and your daughter suddenly blurts out, “I can’t wait three days until we’re cutting open a real heart!” the other mothers stop offering to share hairpins.

  Saturday morning arrived. The air drooped around us in the stale, grimy oven blast that makes Los Angeles natives wonder why anyone moves here. I hustled Alice through Saturday’s breakfast and getting dressed. As I steered her tow
ard the garage she asked, “Ballet class?”

  “No.”

  “Karate class?”

  “No.”

  “Gymnastics?”

  “No.”

  “Horseback riding?”

  “No.”

  Yes, it’s possible we needed to cut back on her schedule. “Actually,” I said, in the breathless tone of the emcee announcing who was to be first runner-up and who was now Miss Universe, “We’re going to pick up your cow’s heart!”

  The scream of delight was gratifying. We both flew into the car. Of course, that was the last time we traveled faster than a walk for the next hour. To get to the neighborhood where our hookup was to occur we needed to take the freeway. It was Saturday morning, not even 9:00 a.m. yet, but the freeway was packed solid. Being a native, I decided it was people trying to get to another freeway, which would take them to the beach, mercifully in the opposite direction. This logic worked only until we passed that juncture and the traffic grew worse.

  Okay, I thought grimly, there was an accident somewhere up ahead so, I turned on the AM news-radio station. Nothing. If there was an accident up ahead, it was one of those super-secret, invisible black-ops accidents that aren’t reported. I sank a little farther into my seat and entered into the driver’s version of hibernation; my breathing slowed, my metabolism dropped, I prepared to be out of commission until spring when I would emerge from the freeway hungry and irritable. But being in traffic wasn’t all that bad. The car wasn’t uncomfortable and the kid was reading.

  Suddenly, either I entered menopause or the temperature in the car went up by thirty degrees. I put my hand over the vent. The air blasting out had gone from soothingly cool to hellishly hot. My car had recently entered its dementia years and had taken to periodically forgetting how to air-condition. Our trustworthy and supremely competent mechanic had pronounced the situations “weird,” “too expensive to fix,” “possibly not fixable,” and “a big pain in the ass.” While we tried to figure out the best way to repair it without compromising Alice’s college plans, he suggested I switch off the air-conditioning whenever it got mulish. I felt virtuous in a smaller carbon-footprint way. I could simply roll down the windows and let the breeze do its work.