Tuesday Nights in 1980

by Molly Prentiss

  This is him saying everything: he squirts the yellow paint right into the lid of the box. “There you go,” he says. “Start your pictures.”

  “But I don’t want to put it on the boy’s back because it might camouflage him and then people won’t find him and he will still be missing forever.”

  “Well you sure are a picky one, aren’t you? Okay. Hmm.” Engales grabs one of the smaller of his old canvases, an unfinished painting of the Telemondo guy, smoking ten cigarettes at once. He sets it down in front of Julian.

  Julian looks up at him with those huge Franca eyes. “But it is already full,” the boy says.

  “If you’re going to stay with me,” Engales says, “you’re going to have to learn to live a little. I don’t want this painting anymore, okay? Just go right over the top of it, like this.” He holds his hand over the boy’s and dips it into the paint. He feels the satisfying goopy grip of it, then the release as it presses into the grain of the canvas. A line emerges.

  This is him saying everything: this line. This is him going back to Franca as she crouches over the eggs. This is him telling her: The world is full of eggs. What do these eggs matter when the world is full of eggs?

  Julian looks up at Engales for approval. “Go on,” he tells him, letting go of his hands now. “That’s it. Nice. See, you know what you’re doing! You don’t need my help!”

  Julian begins to draw a face over the Telemondo guy’s face. He draws long hair and a big mouth. Eyes with dots in them. Circles at the cheeks. While he is drawing, he forgets about everything: the lost cat, the creature in the corner, even the Brother. He could just draw and draw. He could draw for a hundred hours. When he is finished, the Brother hands him another canvas, this time one with a lady in a fish hat on it.

  “Who’s this lady?” he says.

  “Just some lady,” the Brother says.

  Julian draws his mother’s face over the lady’s face, and when he is done with that one, there are more. He draws and draws. If he draws enough, she will see them, he knows.

  Engales sees her, his sister, coming to life around him. There is Franca in the bathtub when they were small, her tiny hands scooping water. There is Franca riding her bike in a bird-like way, her elbows flapping at her sides. There is Franca making a mud pie in the backyard and serving it to him on a red plastic plate. There is Franca in her embroidered tunics with the stitches running around like ants on the fabric. Franca standing under their mother like a small version of their mother. Franca getting chased by a bigger girl down an alleyway off Calle Bolívar. Hitting the bigger girl with a stick to protect her and then feeling bad because he had hit a girl. Franca screaming that she hated him because he cut off a chunk of her hair in the middle of the night. Franca learning pastries from their grandfather. Franca not being patient enough for the pastries at first, wanting to run around outside. Franca growing breasts that first came out like little whipped-cream peaks and then became big round cakes that he hated. Knowing what Franca was thinking, even when it was private. Reading Franca’s journal, even when it was private. Franca saying tits. Franca laughing. Franca moaning with Morales in their parents’ room, how hearing her moans was like feeling his parents die again. Franca with a stomach, large and round, coming out of her like a watermelon. Franca in a blue coat, being thrown into the back of a Ford Falcon. Just one whoosh of the car’s engine, and she was gone.

  She is gone. But she is also here, in the room, smiling atop all of Engales’s unfinished paintings. Franca had sent her son here. She had chosen Raul. She had trusted only the Brother to save her, and to save her son.

  Suddenly Julian stands up on the bed in the middle of the pictures, which tilt a little bit when he walks over the mattress to the Brother. He puts the Brother’s head into the place where his arm meets his body. He puts his arms around the Brother’s head and rocks the head.

  “You’re going to have to be quiet for this to work,” Julian says.

  “For what to work?” the Brother says.

  “I’m stirring your head,” says Julian.

  “Okay . . .”

  “And I’m going to tell you the story.”

  “What story?”

  “I said you’re going to have to be quiet.”

  “Lips are sealed.”

  “There were a brother and a sister who loved each other as much as infinity.”

  “How do you know such a big word?” the Brother says.

  “I just do know,” Julian says impatiently.

  “Quiet,” says the Brother. “Being quiet now.”

  Julian tells the whole thing. The cakes, the ESP, the drawings. The sister pinning the drawings up all over the house, because she loved them so much and she knew her brother had made them just for her.

  “So why did the brother leave?” the Brother asks, just at the moment when you are supposed to ask that.

  “How did you know the brother left?” Julian says. “I haven’t gotten to that part of the story.”

  “Just a guess,” says the Brother. Then the Brother pulls his head from the bowl of Julian’s armpit and looks at Julian in the face. Engales wants to tell this boy everything he never told Franca, to make him feel good and safe. “You’re a smart kid, Juli. Like your grandpa Braulio. You would have liked him. He had a funny nose. And you’re a good artist, too.” He pauses, takes the boy’s face in his hand. “Did you know that?”

  “Yeah. My mom tells me that all the time. And James told me.”

  The Brother smiles a little bit but still looks sad.

  “Did you make these?” Julian asks.

  “Yes, I did.”

  “You’re a good artist, too.”

  The Brother laughs, and when he does the whole year floods through him—Times Square, Lucy on Jane Street, the squat and its demise, Winona’s art horoscopes, James Bennett, this boy. Looking back on it, the year felt as distinct and tangible as one of Tehching’s years: bound up tightly into one little bundle of time. He wonders how Tehching feels when the years are over, when he can start sleeping inside after being outside for 365 days, when he can stop waking up every hour to punch his time clock. Does he miss the project for what it provided? A structure inside of which to live a life? Does the ending of the project mean the stripping of some kind of shield? The year will end in just a couple days, Engales thinks. Winona will have her party, people will cheer and drink champagne, she’ll whisper to each of them their art fortune for the New Year. What will his be? He thinks he has an idea. His chest feels light and his heart swollen and purposeful.

  This is him picking up a paintbrush with his left hand. This is him dipping his brush into the paint. This is the sensual suck of the paint’s resistance. This is the way it peaks on the brush. This is him painting for Franca.

  The canvas in front of him is an unfinished portrait of Lucy. He erases her face with a yellow stroke. He hopes she’s okay. He will call her to see if she’s okay. He will take her to coffee at Binibon, say he’s sorry. He will kiss her on the cheek. He will mix in the tiniest bit of blue.

  “This is how you make real skin color,” he tells Julian. “You add the tiniest bit of blue.”

  “No way,” says Julian, who is still working diligently on painting out a fishmonger’s neck with bright orange.

  Engales laughs again. Here is a boy with Franca’s big, funny eyes. Here is a boy who is learning how to be in the world, with the whole world in front of him. Here is a boy who wants to make a hundred pictures in one night. It is absurd. It is impossible. It is absurdly, impossibly beautiful. Here is an impossible, beautiful chance.

  They spend the whole night finishing the pictures. They don’t go to sleep. Engales helps Julian count, to make sure there are one hundred. When they are done, they look out at the room, which has brightened with smooth winter light. There are a hundred Francas. A hundred sisters and a hundred mothers.

  They are tired. They have succeeded. Julian lifts up his hand.

  “What’s that for?” says t
he Brother.

  “You’re supposed to high-five me,” Julian says. “James does it when I finish a picture. James loves art.”

  Engales smiles. James does love art. He thinks of how James will be here tomorrow at noon to pick up Julian, how James will look around this shitty apartment full of crudely rendered Francas and smile, and understand. Relief overcomes Engales, as if it is only now—when he imagines someone he loves loving it, seeing in it what he sees—that this room full of paintings can become beautiful, or valid, or real.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This book began and ended with a Claudia—Bernardi, whose powerful teachings enlightened me to Argentina’s history and sparked Franca’s character into being; and Ballard, whose guidance, editorial vision, and belief in this project turned it from a dream into a reality. Thank you for being the strongest and smartest and steeliest of women.

  My parents, Nikki Silva and Charles Prentiss, are not only my biggest inspiration but also my unfailing support system. Mom and Dad: your boundless creativity, intelligence, kindness, and love are the reason why this book (and everything else I’ve ever made or been) exists. I admire you completely.

  My brothers and sisters—whole, half, in-law, and commune—are the very best humans I know. I am so grateful for the way you make me feel, think, and laugh.

  To the commune and its members: thank you for the way you raised us, the many examples you set for us, the dinners you cooked for us, and for letting me take over the breakfast table when I needed to write. Thank you to my families: Silva, Prentiss, Bennett, Baer, Becker, Bauer, Pruitt, Lewinger, Beckman-Dorr, and Paul. Also: Davia Nelson, Jo Aribas, Bobby Andrus, and Sue Struck.

  Thank you to the William Morris team and the Scout Press team, especially Alison Callahan, Jennifer Bergstrom, Louise Burke, Jennifer Robinson, Meagan Harris, and Nina Cordes, and to my publicist Kimberly Burns, for their crazy-hard work, collaboration, and willingness to take a chance on me.

  Thank you to the institutions that have guided, educated, and supported me: Children’s Alley, Gateway Elementary, Aptos High School, UCSB, the California College of the Arts, the Carville Annex, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, the Blue Mountain Center, and the Aspen Writer’s Foundation. And special thanks to the teachers who have changed my life: Mary Jo and Jim Marshall, Diana Rothman, Lydia Parker, Mrs. Whitmore, Mr. Baer, Ms. Giroux, Mashey Bernstein, Michael Petracca, Tom Barbash, Daniel Alarcón, Miranda Mellis, Claire Chafee, and Cooley Windsor.

  Sarah Fontaine and Melissa Seley: you have read this manuscript too many times to count, in all its iterations, year after year, and for this I am forever indebted to you. Without your two genius brains, this book would not be. And to the other friends who have read or edited all or sections of this book—Elena Schilder, Junior Clemons, Emily Jern-Miller, Dan Lichtenberg, and my many workshop and writing group mates—I appreciate you so much. Jessica Chrastil—thank you for your unflagging friendship, stellar emotional support, wacky mind, and lust for life. Carmen Winant, you were there for the birth of this and through it; you inspire me as an artist and a woman and a being and a friend. And to all my other friends who nurtured me while I trudged through this project, forgave me for missing beach days, and kept me sane with their humor and kindness—I thank the universe for you every day.

  To my Bloomingdale’s family, thank you for filling my days with bad puns and big laughs.

  To the authors and artists whose books and poems and sentences and words and paintings and projects have influenced and guided me, thank you for your generosity.

  And last but definitely not least, I would like to thank my soon-to-be-husband, Forrest Lewinger. You are the kindest, most curious man, and by far the best listener I’ve ever met. Thank you for your patience, your ideas, and your profound love.

  MOLLY PRENTISS was born and raised in Santa Cruz, California. She has been a Writer in Residence at Workspace at the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, the Blue Mountain Center, and the Vermont Studio Center, and was chosen as an Emerging Writer Fellow by the Aspen Writers Foundation. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the California College of the Arts. She lives, writes, and walks around in Brooklyn, New York.

  FOR MORE ON THIS AUTHOR: authors.simonandschuster.com/Molly-Prentiss

  MEET THE AUTHORS, WATCH VIDEOS AND MORE AT

  SimonandSchuster.com

  ScoutPressBooks.com

  @ScoutPressBooks

  We hope you enjoyed reading this Scout Press eBook.

  * * *

  Join our mailing list and get updates on new releases, deals, bonus content and other great books from Scout Press and Simon & Schuster.

  CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP

  or visit us online to sign up at

  eBookNews.SimonandSchuster.com

  Scout Press

  An Imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2016 by Molly Prentiss

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Scout Press Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

  First Scout Press hardcover edition April 2016

  SCOUT PRESS and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales at 1-866-506-1949 or business@simonandschuster.com.

  The Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau can bring authors to your live event. For more information or to book an event, contact the Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau at 1-866-248-3049 or visit our website at www.simonspeakers.com.

  Interior design by Renato Stanisic

  Jacket design by Rodrigo Corral Design Inc

  Jacket photograph © Ken Schles/Gallery Stock

  Author photograph © Elizabeth Leitzell

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Prentiss, Molly

   Tuesday nights in 1980 : a novel / by Molly Prentiss. — First Scout Press hardcover edition.

    pages cm

   1. Art critics—New York (State)—New York—Fiction. 2. Painters—New York (State)—New York—Fiction. 3. Art—Collectors and collecting—New York (State)—New York—Fiction. I. Title.

   PS3616.R455T83 2016

   813’.6—dc23   2015027259

  ISBN 978-1-5011-2104-3

  ISBN 978-1-5011-2106-7 (ebook)