LONG BEACH, N.Y.FOR 25 years I’ve been going to Nick the barber. I’ve stuck with him for one reason. He gives me a good haircut. The shop is called Majestic Barber, which is funny. There is nothing majestic about the place.It’s a plain, old-fashioned men’s barbershop that smells of talc and shaving cream. Nick wears a reddish-purple smock. While you wait you can read the tabloids or girlie magazines. If the phone rings, Nick answers, “barbershop,” which pretty much covers it.I appreciate the predictability of the haircut. I don’t have to say a word. Without fail, two-thirds of the way through, Nick undoes the clasp, shakes the hair off the cloth, refastens the cloth, then finishes.I don’t have to remind him to trim my eyebrows or ears.I like the feel of the warm shaving cream and straight edge razor when he trims my sideburns. At the end, he always says, “A little hair spray?”For 25 years I’ve never used hair spray but it’s nice being asked. I don’t think we spoke a personal word for the first 10 or 15 years.
I’d listen to him talk to the regulars, about the judges and prosecutors and party leaders in town, about the zoning plans for some beachfront lot, about the news of the day. From this, I knew Nick’s politics and mine could not be more different. This was good reason to stay quiet: I didn’t want anything political ruining a good haircut.Some time during the 1990s we began talking. I don’t remember how it started. Probably it had something to do with my having children, and feeling more a part of the community. I began to know the players. The judge’s son baby-sat my kids. My three boys were on the swim team with the prosecutor’s sons. My daughter was in the same class as the police chief’s grandson.The town’s secrets started to interest me. And while I never knew him to tell me something he shouldn’t or give away one of my secrets, he was very good at passing on the open secrets that most longtimers in a town know: who had cancer; whom the produce man was sleeping with;
what it was like giving a haircut at home, to a mobster’s disabled son.I found myself looking forward to the social aspect of my haircuts.My hair has thinned, but it never stops growing, and as 25 years of haircuts piled up, I began to piece together Nick’s life from snatches of our conversations.I knew he was a lifelong bachelor and lived with his mother. Thursday nights, he bowled in the men’s league in Rockville Centre. Sundays he went to Belmont race track. Once a week he drove to Port Washington to have dinner with his sister Maria.He grew up in Italy, worked as a barber’s apprentice, then came to this country in the early 1960s, at age 20, settling in Long Beach because that’s where his sister Teresa lived. Through family, he found work at Majestic Barber, and never left, buying the shop in 1982, after the owner died. As a new millennium dawned, our talks turned more to our aches and pains. After 46 years giving haircuts, he limps and I told him what a difference hip surgery had made for my wife.
“I can’t miss that much work, Mike,” he said. “I’m fine, I can stand nine hours without any problem.” For several years now, he hasn’t missed a day.One recent Friday morning, I arrived at the shop at 8:05 and knew something wasn’t right. The lights weren’t on and the closed sign was still out. Theoretically the shop opens at 8, but there are always a few old guys who get there earlier, because, as Nick says, “They’re retired, they’re busy, they have no time to waste.” Nick was standing in the middle of the room and waved me in. He looked a little lost. Usually he and the shop are impeccably clean, but there was a smudge of talc on his smock. “I have to tell you, Mike,” he said. “My mother died last night.”I told him how sorry I was. I offered to come back another time.“He clipped on the barber’s cloth and started cutting.I knew a little about his mother. In recent years we’d compared notes. His was born in 1913, mine in 1914. His was “100 percent mentally” as she aged, but rarely left the house they shared.
Mine had deteriorated mentally, but was strong physically. His mother had an aide at home 10 hours a day; mine was in assisted living nearby. Mine died in 2006 at 92, his was dead at 94.I asked her name.“After 25 years, I knew my barber’s last name. “I can’t believe it,” he said. She fell Dec. 5. When he got home from the shop that evening, “she said to me, ‘Nicky, don’t be scared but I fell.’ She said she had no pain.” It was five days before they realized she’d broken her hip.The next two months were back and forth between the hospital and a rehab facility, and the doctor was hopeful, he said. “It was hard going home after work,” he said. “You come home to an empty house. I got to put the heat up.” He’d lived with her all his 66 years.“I visited her last night,” he said. “Her mind was still 100 percent. At 8:30 I said good night. She said: ‘Nicky, did you eat something? Make sure you go out and get something to eat.’ ” They were her last words;
two hours later, the hospital called.Nick undid the clip, shook the hair off the cloth and refastened the clip.He said he couldn’t believe she was gone, and while it might sound crazy to some — not believing a 94-year-old with a broken hip could die — I knew exactly what he meant. I had the same reaction when my 92-year-old mother died. Fifteen months later, I still have moments, when I forget I’m the parent and think I’m the son.“A little hair spray, Mike?” As I climbed out of the chair, I saw a father and his young son waiting their turn, and it struck me the way hair never stops growing.Standing face to face, it was hard to know what to say to my barber. A hug seemed too personal, so I put my arm around his shoulders and we shook hands.“I’m so sorry, Nick,” I kept saying.“Thank you, Mike,” he kept saying until I’d backed out the door. Four days later, a Tuesday, Nick closed the shop for the funeral. Rosa Oricchio, who had been married 58 years and was a lifelong housewife, was remembered for her love of family as well as her linguine with fresh tomato sauce, capers and mushrooms.