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

by Quinn Cummings

  In theory, a gauge sample is nearly always a square or a rectangle. When I do it, it’s always Anything Can Happen Day. Once in a while, feeling naughty and rebellious, I’ve continued with a knitting pattern without actually confirming the gauge sample. Perhaps you already see the problem; if my hand goes numb after a few minutes and the quality of my knitting goes to hell, what happens after, say, a half hour? Terrible things. The width of the knitting drifts in, wanders out, has brief rows of consistency that only give the observer a heartbreaking glimpse of what might have been if only I knew what my fingers were doing. People looking at what I’m making tend to say the same things you say to small children who proudly present you with a picture of…something:

  “Well, aren’t you working hard!”

  “You must be very proud of that!”

  “Wow, Quinn, that’s a great…That’s knitting, right?”

  How does it develop the iconic twisting shape of the double helix? How do I, without fail, create a shape that would be the envy of high-school biology teachers everywhere? I’m not entirely certain, but it too seems to have something to do with my numb, club-like fingers. It seems that if you are tightening and loosening the yarn at random intervals, the knitting starts to spiral, perhaps in an attempt to get away from you.

  Halfway through the project, I bow to the inevitable and acknowledge that this twisted bit of increasingly arbitrary width is not going to magically transform itself into a set-in sleeve, and I unravel the yarn. I unravel the yarn sullenly. I unravel the yarn ungraciously. I unravel the yarn while picking fights with people. But I unravel the yarn. Then I commence the re-knitting of the sleeve. But it goes no better the second time around. Or the third. After the fourth time, when the yarn is now grubby and irredeemably stretched-out, I jam the entire thing into the bottom of the closet, along with the other crafting dead ends: Anyone Can Felt and Decoupage for Dummies. By the time the third half-finished double helix bounces off the closet floor, I am prepared to admit that knitting affords me no pleasure and generates no attractive accessories. In fact, knitting irritates the hell out of me.

  Thinking about kniting, though, is wonderful. In my mind, I’m one of those women who knit in movie theaters. I decide on Tuesday to whip myself up a stylish halter top and wear it on Saturday night. Alice and I pore through my most recent knitting magazine and she points to a Fair Isle sweater and shyly asks me to make it for her. I fondly pat her head and say, “Of course, sweetheart.” People stop using rulers in this house, preferring to use my gauge samples, because they are just that even. How I love to think about knitting. When Alice came to me to learn knitting, I offered her a pile of knitting magazines and tried to teach her how to think about knitting. She sighed. I pretended that the problem was with knitting and my log-like fingers, not with all crafts. Surely, there were other things I could teach her to do.

  Then Alice spotted a child-size sewing machine in a catalog I hadn’t buried deeply enough in the recycling bin. Charmed by its size and pinkness, she declared she wanted to learn to sew. I patted her hand and said, “Well, ask for it for Christmas” in what I hoped was an “I look forward to teaching you how to sew, a thing I know how to do” tone of voice but would have more accurately been a “Dear God, please let her develop a hatred of the manual arts before I have to let that demonic box into my house” tone of voice. I took sewing class four times in summer school and failed every time. I didn’t just fail the final project; I failed threading the machine.

  Every time, I would say to the instructor, “I am the dumbest person alive and the only thing my sewing machine will ever produce is thread goiters.” And every time she would rub my head and say, “There, there. You just haven’t had it explained to you correctly.” The same portion of the brain that allows some people to think you don’t hate fruitcake, you just haven’t had the right one yet is that portion of the brain that leads sewing instructors to believe the only thing standing between me and sewing proficiency is speaking very slowly. The instructor would open the back of the machine and I, as if staring into an active digestive system, would flinch and avert my eyes.

  “Oh,” she’d croon, “it’s really quite simple. You just put the bobbin up and wind…the…thread…through…the…hole…under…the…crankshaft…halfway…to…flibst…the…innermost…Jovean…moon…spin…it…around…this…Salvadorean…parabola…and…it…comes…up…here! Now, the bottom one is a little more tricky…”

  She would do it for me. Then she’d watch me do it eighty or ninety times before realizing someone else in the class had sewn her hand to her shirt or made a bong out of a steam iron, at which point she would leave. I would insert fabric, put my foot on the pedal, and within twenty seconds create a thread-goiter of such density as to render the machine unusable for the rest of the school year. I will become that woman who sends her daughter to sleep-away sewing camp to avoid the look of pity and horror I would earn giving this shiny new sewing machine an intestinal blockage.

  Still, I kept trying to be the crafty mom. We made a pinecone Christmas tree. In under a minute I had glued the tree to my hand. I started ineffectually jabbing the pipe cleaner I was supposed to use for tinsel between the tree and my hand, to free it from my skin. It did loosen a bit, but only after I stabbed myself in the palm, leaving a permanent silvery reminder under my life line. It’s hard to get excited about homemade ornaments when you’re trying to decide if you need an antibiotic booster for Boxing Day.

  At one point, Alice was given a book of elegant paper dolls and I, removing them from the page, cut off their heads. This wasn’t a complete loss, as it led to a fun afternoon of “Alice dresses the aristocracy during the French Revolution.”

  A parenting magazine showed a picture of a rock with googly eyes and painted hair attached. In its own way, it was strangely winning. The magazine swore we could do it together. That day, I learned I can attach googly eyes to anything and no matter where I place them, no matter how many times I move them around or align their focus, the effect is that of a mortally wounded soldier on the battlefield, gazing up into your soul, mutely begging you to shoot him.

  This all would be easier if Consort were equally incompetent, but he’s not. His google-eyed rocks gaze upon mine with scorn. He can cut out paper dolls. He could create a Conestoga mini-wagon that would run on solar power and spark a bidding war between Lilliputian pioneers. In fact, there’s a thick file in Alice’s brain labeled THINGS DADDY CAN DO THAT MOMMY CAN’T. Daddy can drive a stick-shift and Mommy can’t. As my mother says, our people don’t drive a stick-shift for the same reason that we don’t beat our clothing clean against a rock. But the fact remains: Daddy can leap into a stick-shifted car and peel away; Mommy would sit in the driver’s seat and wonder why there was an extra pedal on the floor. Daddy can use all those dangerous-looking carpentry tools he has in the garage. He doesn’t, mind you, but he could. Pointing out that I have a kitchen full of tools I don’t use doesn’t make me cooler. Daddy, like some of the more charismatic boys in Alice’s class, can make a noise using only his hand and his armpit. Mommy claims she could, but doesn’t choose to—which makes no sense because who wouldn’t want to make noises with their armpits?

  Eventually, we will leave the Craft Age (which comes after the Bronze Age, before the Bronzer Age) and will enter the Higher Math Age, at which point I will lose face all over again. The yawning sense of incompetence and panic that washes over me when confronted with construction paper, pipe cleaners, and glue is as nothing compared to what I will feel when Alice asks for help with her geometry homework. Proofs, theorems, sines, cosines, algorithms—they all blur together in my head, creating a hellish bouillabaisse that will drown the last of my daughter’s respect for me. Her father, of course, enjoys higher math thoroughly, so this will be a wonderful bonding time for them. They will make calculus jokes and, after a few seconds, I’ll laugh along, nervously and a little too loudly; and because they love me they will take pity on me. One of them will bring
out the dusty Conestoga wagon and we’ll all look at it as a wheel falls off. Alice will cover my hand with hers and say something kind before she and her father go off to create cold fusion.

  Lift. Twist. Pull.

  I DON’T KNOW HOW I GOT SO LUCKY, BUT WHEN CONSORT gets sick, he gets sick discreetly. Possessing a high tolerance for discomfort—a trait that might owe something to living with me—he just plugs away until I find myself shouting, “Would you please just get into bed and insert in the IV!” This is, I should note, a loving shout.

  A recent illness was different. It was so brutal he went to bed with only modest badgering on my part. He had aches, a dry hacking cough, chills but no fever, and intermittent dizziness. It was as if his immune system was sampling random pages from the Physician’s Desk Reference. Poor Consort, he was genuinely miserable.

  The first night he was sick, we decided Consort would sleep in Alice’s room and she would bunk with me. This worked for exactly one night because Alice—though as winning as a stadium filled with Miss Congenialities—has more pointy corners than a starfish. I kept waking up as each of her fifteen elbows found their way into my ribs, spine, and eyes. Add to this her maternally inherited habit of grinding her teeth so forcefully it sounds like a garbage disposal with a spoon stuck in it, and I knew we needed another plan. If Consort was even slightly improved, we’d put her back in her room and I’d take my chances.

  The next day, Consort sounded worse and looked almost as bad. His complexion had taken on the shiny, greenish-gray tone of an oyster. We contacted the doctor and he prescribed antibiotics for him. Consort would be contagious for at least another day and probably coughing all night. The sleep issue raised its head again. Consort could have our bed back, Alice would take her pointiness and her grinding back to her own dominion, and I would sleep on the couch. I didn’t mind. Our couch has marvelous soporific properties, which you wouldn’t think of by looking at it. It’s from the 1950s, huge and sinuously curved. When we first got it, I had it upholstered in a fuzzy, bright green fabric, which looked wonderful as a three-by-two-foot sample. Spread across the couch’s statement-making size, however, it became a background character from a Sesame Street arena show. Or a gigantic, gay amoeba. This was just one in a long list of design mistakes I’ve made over the years, but when you sit on it you can hear the soft fabric crooning, “Just put your head down. Just for a second. No one will know…” Two hours later you wake up with a fuzzy-fabric pattern etched on your face.

  This night, I settled Alice into bed and arrayed her stuffed animals around her feet in parade formation. Then I settled Consort in, placing his meds in a similar deployment. I grabbed my favorite pillow and a blanket from the linen closet and headed to the living room. I lit a fire in the fireplace and brewed some herb tea. The room looked welcoming and cozy in a nearly professional way. Even the immense homosexual paramecium looked less weird than usual. Had I placed a sweet grandma on the couch, I could have shot an ad for long-distance telephone service. A blonde model would have sold you Midol.

  I crafted a little nest with the blanket and pillow and tucked myself in. Lulabelle loped into the room, came to an abrupt stop, and stared. I don’t know what she had been planning but clearly my being there spoiled it. I patted the blanket. She considered her options and sprung up. I scratched her head as I read. Somewhere in the house, Consort coughed in his sleep and Alice stuck her pointy corners into dreamed adversaries. From the outside it probably didn’t look like nirvana but it was as close to peace as my family got. That should have been my first clue.

  One moment I was scratching between Lu’s ears, the next I was removing her nails and teeth from deep in my hand. Lulabelle was gazing directly at me but seeing nothing. Her eyes were solid black marbles. She sank her nails into my hand again and gurgled in delight. This wretched little beast was obviously possessed. I was harboring a psycho cat-zombie, desperate for the life-regenerating properties of human flesh. What could possibly be making our calm, friendly cat so damned weird?

  And then I remembered. Catnip!

  A month earlier, I’d been invited to a school fund-raiser for a friend’s kid. Try as I might, I cannot think of a way to attend these things without spending money on unnecessary stuff. Typically I avoid them like Consort’s illness, but if I blew off my friend’s fund-raiser I could never guilt her into coming to ours. That’s how it works. So there I was, standing in a bustling auditorium trying to decide which I needed less: a free-trade baby rattle or hemp oven mitts. Then I noticed a small collection of cat toys in a basket. Tuning out the poncho-clad mom explaining how these were made by indigenous Peruvian villagers—people who must have been slightly baffled by the concept of “making toys for food to play with”—I grabbed the smallest object on the table.

  “And this…?” I asked, holding up a small plastic bag of something I could only hope was legal in the state of California.

  “Organic catnip,” she said, pleased I had noticed. “Grown by a prison outreach program. They also raise beets and make fruitcake.”

  I was unclear of the connection unless it was Things Most People Don’t Eat, but I didn’t care. For less than ten dollars, I could catch my friend’s eye as I slid out the door, waving the unbleached-paper bag indicating I had bought something, and feel no guilt over ambushing her with a fundraising Tupperware catalog later in the year.

  When I got home that night, Lulabelle was sleeping on our bed, a black dot of contentment. She wanted nothing more in this world than to continue in a state of perfect bliss. So, naturally, I woke her. I shook out one of the rather suspicious-looking buds and put it in front of her without any expectation of enthusiasm on her part. I had tempted her with catnip toys before, but Lulabelle’s attitude had always been, “Wake me when it’s thrashing and screaming in fear.” The woman who sold it to me swore that its freshness, its lack of pesticides, and its general good karma from having been grown by the formerly oppressed gave it extra moxie.

  Lulabelle flicked an ear, extended one paw, and patted the flower around. She stood up and batted it around a little more vigorously. Then she jumped straight into the air, pounced on the bud, flung it skyward, leapt after it, and turning in space, flopped on top of it like a drunken acrobat. I was delighted. For once, I had given a gift where the recipient didn’t ask for the receipt. In fact, she was getting a little too pleased with her present. Somewhere between the frantic biting of the bud—followed immediately by attacking my knees—and a series of frenetic wind sprints accompanied by weird guttural shrieks, I decided Lulabelle had enough personality as it was. She didn’t need a psychotropic jump-start.

  I hid the bag in the office. I was washing dishes an hour later when the cat flew into the kitchen, leapt at my shoulder howling in pure delight, then ran off toward the bedrooms. Something told me she might be driving under the influence again. I checked the office. Lulabelle had pushed open the door, located the bag on its high shelf, torn it open with her claws and teeth, and eaten a few more buds. Summoning my inner drug trafficker, I packaged the bag inside another bag and placed it first in a hanging basket over the kitchen sink and then inside a high cupboard. Both times, within an hour, another bud had been scored and I had a nine-pound, cranked-up Hell’s Angel terrorizing my home.

  I scanned the house trying to think of a single drawer or cabinet that even the most determined addict couldn’t tease open. The linen closet! The doors of the linen closet have been painted so many times over the past eighty years that the accumulated paint has added another quarter-inch or so to each panel. Once they are closed, it takes a very specific Lift, Twist, Pull maneuver to open them without injury—a move that had taken me six months to perfect. If Lulabelle figured this out, my concern would not be how to keep her away from the catnip but how we were going to afford college for both the kid and the cat. I toyed with the idea of just throwing the bag of murderous fun in the trash, but rejected that on two grounds: one, I don’t throw perfectly good anything away and two, the
vague sense of guilt that I’d be taking away the only pure joy the cat has in which we can all participate. I’m sure she felt equally, exquisitely alive when snapping a bird’s neck or screaming at the neighbor’s pugs, but I don’t see the rest of the family participating in either activity.

  So I crammed the bag into the linen closet and promptly forgot about it. The catnip, indifferent to my wish that it would just go away, continued to emit its mysterious vapors deeply into the blankets into which it had been tucked. Now, one of these blankets was covering my body, on top of which was the cat, flopping around like a freshly caught swordfish and living in a paradise only she could see. Every time I went to touch her, to remove her from the head shop that was my blanket, she would bite me. I had two options: to lie very still and wait for the catnip to wear off or to lie very still and wait for the feline assassin to grow bored. Usually, I stay pretty still when I’m sleeping; that night I’m sure I gave every appearance of being guest of honor at my own wake.

  The next morning, Lulabelle sprung up from the couch, stretching and yawning. She looked pleased with herself, alert and energized. Having spent the same night reminding myself not to move, I was less than refreshed. My eyes were tiny raisins shoved into dough. My facial skin hung on me like a poncho. I decided that no matter what symptoms Consort exhibited during the day, sleeping in my own bed was still better than having a deranged cat use my foot as a speed bag.

  But then Consort coughed. He coughed all day, a rasping and stubborn hack that laughed at all the over-the-counter treatments and at least one prescribed medication. The high-octane cough syrup might have prevented him from operating heavy machinery but it didn’t prevent him from coughing. By the time we went to bed, I was resigned to the fact I’d be on the couch again if I had any hope of sleeping at all. Returning to the linen closet, I realized that even though I knew stowing the catnip there had been a bad idea, I hadn’t moved it, thus guaranteeing a wide selection of drug-infused bedding. I carefully chose the blanket farthest from the bag o’ buds for my next night’s sleep.