March 1976
trash was overflowing on the curb and covered in a thin layer of frost. The radio was low and tinny, with Steely Dan mumbling
something about not going back to their old school, and nothing was going on.
New York City was supposed to be so much better than this. Helen had arrived nine months before, after a disastrous first
year at Mount Holyoke. She hadn’t wanted to go, but her mother went to Holyoke and she was told that was where she would be
going. Helen got lost in between its stately buildings. The other students seemed to be either wearing pearls and going to
teas or talking about feminist theory and armpit hair. Helen was more on the side of armpit hair, but largely uninterested
in everything else that Mount Holyoke had to offer.
Only one place felt right to Helen: New York City.
That was where things happened. It electrified her.
She didn’t want to be a professor or someone’s wife or whatever this school was training her for.
She wanted to cook and bake and hang out in restaurant kitchens, go out at night.
Dance. Be somewhere the lights were always on.
After barely passing her freshman year, Helen examined her small savings, found them to be sufficient, and explained to her
crying mother and disappointed father that she’d already called someone about an ad she saw for a bedroom in an apartment
in the East Village. They begged her to at least go to the Upper East Side, where her aunt’s friend had a place she could
stay, and she could get her a job at the art museum or maybe try Barnard College. Being a cook wasn’t good enough for Helen
Martha Jesperson of the Main Line Philadelphia Jespersons. New York City was filthy and dangerous and the East Village was,
in their opinion, where the disgusting city dumped its trash.
She took the train to Penn Station on a bright June morning and caught a cab.
This was a mistake, as her new roommates were outside when she pulled up and viewed the cab with suspicion.
This was the neighborhood of underground newspapers and bookshops, tiny cafés where freaks could meet up, run-down delis, weird boutiques.
You arrived by bike or motorcycle, weird van, beat-up car, on foot, sure .
. . but not by cab, carrying two matching and monogrammed suitcases from B.
Altman. She carried these up three sets of dark stairs to an apartment that smelled of old smoke and mold.
The roommates, named Paul and Itchy, were macrobiotic, ate only brown rice and carrots and miso soup, drank twig tea, got stoned constantly and watched Sesame Street.
They both worked at a nearby club, so they slept all day and were never home at night, so Helen never spoke to them.
Helen scored a job at a tiny organic food store on Seventh Street. She spent her days filling large jars with wheat berries
and dried fruit, hauling sacks of brown rice and flour, measuring and pouring into little brown bags, counting change. There
was one good part about this job—there was a kitchen in the back, and the owners trained her in their organic breadmaking
techniques. She had always been a good baker—in the store she learned how to be an excellent one who could make large batches
of baked goods using organic ingredients. She was soon producing solid, thick loaves of brown bread with seeds and apples
that became a customer favorite.
When it got warmer, she frequently read in Tompkins Square Park.
That’s where she’d first seen them. He was in the middle—the guy—tall and lanky, with a Van Dyke beard and usually wearing a floppy brown hat with a white plume sticking out of it.
He often wore purple pants made of crushed velvet and a motley vest with no shirt underneath.
Around him, the girls. They all dressed so colorfully—scarves around their hair, patchwork halters in silk and satin, obviously handmade by someone with a lot of scraps and a good eye.
Flowing skirts, cutoffs with heavy belts, bright stacked platforms, old cowboy boots, bangles down their arms, fringed kimono tops .
. . They were always a happy display, hanging all over each other, whispering and laughing.
Helen wanted to be part of something like that, part of some group that went everywhere arm in arm, who leaned on each other. Who were never alone.
Occasionally, they would look over at her and smile. Helen would look away.
And then came that March day that Helen walked to the Strand Bookstore at Union Square, one of the biggest in the city and
one that had carts outside with cheap used paperbacks. She had just found a decent copy of Catch-22 for twenty cents when she saw them approach, two of them from Tompkins Square. He was wearing a fringed jacket, and the tallest
of the girls was dressed in a dirty white shag coat and well-worn cowboy boots. They walked in Helen’s direction and stopped
by the store entrance, blocking a woman with a swirling, pricey coif probably done by Mr. Kenneth uptown.
“Excuse me,” the woman said stiffly. “I’m trying to get inside.”
The guy dipped down in mock deference, his hand with the hat in it lightly grazing the woman’s right arm.
“Apologies, madam,” he said. “I beg your forgiveness.”
The woman mumbled something about how he was disgusting and pushed past him to get inside. The dark-haired girl came upon
Helen suddenly and hooked her arm.
“Come on,” the girl whispered.
Helen shoved the copy of Catch-22 back onto the cart and went with the girl.
“I’m Denver,” the girl said as they reached the end of the block.
“Helen.”
“And this is Dean.”
The guy had caught up with them, his hat back on his head. The feather tickled Helen’s cheek as he took his place on the opposite
side.
“An auspicious meeting!” he said. “We’ve wanted to meet you.”
“You did?”
“We were wondering why you wouldn’t hang out with us,” Denver said, leading her across the street. “We see you at Tompkins
Square.”
They’d seen her. Noticed her.
“I didn’t think I could,” she said.
“Why not?” Dean asked. “We don’t mind company. No one should be alone. Unless you like being alone. Want us to go?”
“No,” Helen said quickly.
“Even if we have this?” Denver said. She opened her palm and revealed that she was carrying a delicate and clearly very expensive
watch that had certainly come off the snooty woman’s wrist.
“Are you going to turn us in?” Dean said. “If you want to go find a cop, we’ll understand.”
“No,” Helen said.
“Why not?”
“Because . . .”
Helen had waded through so many rooms occupied by that sort of woman, with her Pierre Balmain handbag and Halston ultrasuede dress, her high hair and higher opinion of her position in life.
The loss of the watch would be an irritation, not a problem, and the fodder for many luncheons.
Something to discuss with friends. “Can you believe these dirty hippies? One of them stole my watch!” So no, she did not care.
What she said was:
“It’s just a watch.”
“Good,” Dean replied. “You hungry?”
The three walked downtown, back to the East Village, to a little place called Stone Soup that sold cheap, solid food and had
wobbly tables. Over grilled cheeses and lentil soup they pummeled her with questions. They wanted to know what she did, what
she was into. They liked that she was into cooking and baking.
“You like to feed people,” Dean said. “That’s the most beautiful thing you can do. Bread. There’s nothing more real than bread.”
“Is Denver your real name?” Helen asked the girl.
“As real as it gets,” Denver replied with a laugh. “I’m a mile high all the time.”
Which was a both confusing and delightful answer.
Dean reached for her hand and examined the tattoo Helen had gotten in October when she was a little bit stoned and needed
something to happen. It was of a blue bird and it perched between the thumb and pointer finger of her right hand. (Her mother
would die when and if she ever saw it. Actually die. Dead. Thud. On the ground.)
“Why the bird?” he asked. “Why blue?”
“I don’t know,” Helen said, self-consciously rubbing at the bird. “It’s pretty. I like birds. They had blue ink. I don’t have
a good reason.”
“Those sound like good reasons to me. Blue, blue, blue . . .”
“Blue, blue, blue,” Denver echoed cheerfully.
“Blue’s a good name. You’re Blue. Blue like the ocean. Blue like the sky. Blue like your little blue bird because the ink
was blue. Can we call you Blue?”
“Sure,” Helen said. Blue said.
She was Blue now. Helen was gone, her old identity falling away like a feather from a bird’s tail. She would try to snatch
it back later, but you can’t put a bird back together again, feather by feather.