Life is a carousel - on or off, you’re standing still. All his life, my grandfather wanted to be somewhere else, which is why he ran away from Marsico in the first place. But he was doomed to suffer a village, which grew around him like a fungus. No matter how much the people loved him, and they all loved him, he longed to be gone, which he never was, because he wanted to be with Rose, which made running away impossible.
Everybody loved Rose, who came with a crowd. As her daughters went looking to find their father, the bridegrooms discovered the mother. One look was all it took. I don’t want to call my grandmother a fox, but you should see the pictures. Believe me - no Rose, no Carmine the Barber.
Rose was from Caronia, next to Cefalu, and when my grandfather married her it was like a form of citizenship. It also guaranteed a steady stream of customers, since people from Sicily tend to stick together - like Masons but with no choice.
Carmine met Rose the day they were engaged, though he had nothing to do with it. He was washing his face at a communal faucet behind his flop on Catherine St. when the most beautiful girl in the world handed him a clean towel. Looking past her, he noticed she was with a large group of serious people, arms folded, waiting to see what he would do. Face dripping wet, he looked at the girl again. He took the towel.
Ten years after my grandfather wiped his face, my mother was born, the youngest of eight - two boys followed by six girls. Rose didn’t waste a minute after that, assigning motherhood to her eldest daughter, which duties were then passed on down the line for the next ten years, by which time my mother was cooking, standing on a stool.
With all those kids to clothe, my grandmother opened the tailor shop. Naturally, this tailor shop became very successful, even though receivables were through the roof. But Rose put people to work when there was no work, and that was the thing. She also saw them dressed. Between my grandmother and my grandfather, the standards of grooming were secure.
After they bought the candy store, people had a good reason to spend time at the four corners, eating an ice cream with a fresh haircut and swell duds, listening to FDR or Benny Goodman, hoping for a minute with one of my aunts, who shed beauty across the range of pubescence and who were constantly cutting across the intersection. And radiating in all directions was Rose’s family – from platoon to division, like a regular army.
Sicilians are always looking for authority, which they abhor in any formal sense. It’s a paradox which resulted in a conflicted man, and he wasn’t even Sicilian. My grandfather had no family. He was a country boy from up in the shin - a runaway, which made him perfect because he had no grudges, no dark chapters, no history. He was the guy who everybody thought was fair, a man with nothing at stake, driven by love; who would listen to your problems and offer a bit of advice – advice you would do well to follow. As for giving that advice, he just couldn’t help himself.
And he discovered that no matter how far he ran, he would end up in the same place. The Greeks might call this a tragedy, which it isn’t, even though everybody dies in the end. In fact, my grandfather died laughing. He fell over at the dinner table, in the general uproar over a good joke. I always wished that I knew that joke, but then I’d never forget it, which is what should happen with a good joke.
