Tuesday Nights in 1980 Read Free Page B

you?”
    â€œSixteen weeks today,” Marge said. And James loved the way she said it—already living with a new mother’s understanding of time, where weeks were the only measurement of time that counted—with red beams coming out of her eyes like pretty lasers.
    â€œWell congratulations to you two,” Winona said. “You’re very lucky, and your child will be, too! From what I can tell—and I am the littlest bit clairvoyant, you know—you’re going to make wonderful parents. And do we think we’ll get an artist?”
    â€œI won’t wish it on him,” Marge said with a laugh. “Well, him or her.”
    Winona laughed falsely and touched Marge’s shoulder. “Oh!” she exclaimed. “I almost forgot. The tradition is that I tell you the scoop on whatever artwork you’re standing in front of, and then that’s your painting for the year. Well not your painting—I’m not going to give it to you!—but sort of like your spirit painting, do you know what I mean? You hold it with you through the year. You darlings have the Frank Stella. And you see, Stella did everything backward. He started abstract when no one was being abstract! And then once everyone started going abstract, he got lush and moody and majestic. So there’s your token of Winona wisdom for 1980: Be backward! Go against the tide! Do things the wrong way!” She laughed like a pretty horse.
    â€œWon’t be hard for me,” James said with an awkward chuckle. He thought of how he had gotten here or anywhere: he had only ever done anything wrong, and it was only by chance that it turned into anything right.
    â€œOh, you shut your mouth now!” Winona practically screamed. “Your name is on the very edge of everyone’s lips! Your articles are on the very first page of the arts section! Your brain is, well, I don’t know what the hell your brain is, but it sure is something. And your collection! Lord knows I’ve wanted to get my paws on that since I was covered in placenta! You’re on fire, James. And you know it.”
    James and Marge laughed for Winona until she got pulled away by a woman in a very puffy white dress. “It’s almost time for the countdown!” the woman squealed. Winona looked back toward James and Marge and said over her shoulder: “Get ready for the first Tuesday of the year!” And then to her puffy friend: “I’ve always found Tuesdays so charming, haven’t you? I do everything on Tuesdays”—her voice trailing away—“I take my shower on Tuesdays; I have my shows on Tuesdays . . . how fortuitous that the first day of the decade will fall . . .” Her monologue was out of range now, and she ducked back under the surface of the party as if it were a lake. In the relative quiet of her wake, James found a little bracket of time to delve into his Running List of Worries.
    On James’s Running List of Worries: baby food, and would it smell bad?; the Claes Oldenburg in Winona’s fireplace (Was it being given enough space to breathe? Because it was making his throat close up a little bit); the wrinkle, shaped like a witch’s nose, on the cuff of his pant leg, despite Marge’s diligent ironing; his suit itself (Was white out ?); would his child, if she were a girl, shove a man against the library stacks and kiss him like Marge had done to him, and at such a young age?; would his child, if he were a boy, have a small penis?; did he have a small penis?; and what had Winona just said a moment ago? You’re on fire, James. But what would happen if his fire burned out?
    It was true, he knew, that his brain—a brain in which a word was transformed into a color, where an image was manufactured into a bodily sensation, where applesauce tasted like sadness and winter was the color blue—was the reason he was on any front page of anything, on