Across the Sink
by Adam Petrosino
The buzz from my razor envelops my senses as I carefully keep the neat routine of my facial hair. It’s hypnotic almost, helpfully so, as it locks my eye on the razor. I can focus on the task at hand. I slowly chisel my face into order, a familiar structure that the hand remembers. This morning though, my focus slips—away from the buzz, the razor, the hand, the task—and I see myself. I study myself. Take in each feature. I wonder how the order I keep on my face defines me.
Two hours later, I sit in the back of a car, hopscotching down a gravel road in a tiny, nearly forgotten, Ohio town. I try to tune out the rumble of the tires. From the car window, I look out to see the uncared-for houses of Dillonvale. Tall weeds sprout wildly through cobblestone walkways, and shingles on roofs have corroded into dusty cracked slates. An untethered dog barks in a driveway. A garden hose dribbles into a drain. I wonder how many doors the owners have cared to lock. The houses look broken and abandoned, but I know how much care still lives inside these homes. I think about that for a while, the care. I drift further into thought, the monotonous churn of gravel lulling me slowly into sleep. I sleep until the car grinds to a stop, spraying small stones across the road. I wake to see my gentle reflection in the window. After a moment I look past it, and painfully, remember my destination.
My grandpa (we called him Pap-Pap) was a strong, wide man with a full, bushy mustache under his nose, a horseshoe landed in the coarse sand of his face. He had a cutout of John Wayne in his garage window, an obsession with West Highland Terriers, a rocking chair that he loved, and this triumphant wheeze of a laugh. I always remember Pap-Pap’s mustache, though. Growing a mustache like that was a legacy for the men in our family; that, and the male-pattern baldness. The mustache was unkempt and wily and uncontrollable. He was full of life, of love. I recall being thrown over his shoulder when I was a boy, and I would feel the prickle of that mustache as he kissed my forehead and cheeks and nose, the wheeze of his laugh trailing as he gently lowered me to the ground.
I hadn’t realized how frail he’d become.
The funeral home was quiet, stocked with comfortable seats, flower arrangements, tiny twist-off water bottles, tissues if needed. Family and friends, an assortment of suits and biker jackets, gathered and talked in hushed voices. Even the most brash of the men, who rode in on belching Harleys, kept a soft, reverent tone. A number greeted me with a punch, to the stomach or side or back, but as the dull pain of impact faded, I felt the gentle afterbirth of condolence in every blow.
Once I’d plied my way through reunions, punches, and hugs, I approached the casket with steady, focused footing. I stopped, and inhaled slowly through my nose. I hadn’t seen Pap-Pap for several months before his passing, but I saw now starkly that the image of the powerful, wonderful man that I knew in my youth had, like a flower far past its season, wilted. The jowl of his face was pulled close. His lips were purposefully pursed, hair combed back neatly, fingers so thin that they looked like my own. I noticed the winding of thin thread behind his eyelids. But these details were insignificant. The truly jarring change was that Pap-Pap’s mustache had been shaved down to a sophisticated chevron, neatly trimmed along the edges. I’d never seen it so controlled, so purposefully manicured. I leaned over my grandfather to see his face.
A strange, powerful feeling welled in me then, and familiar noise- the buzz of a razor. With Pap-Pap’s face so carefully ordered, so neatly, routinely trimmed, I found I was once again looking across the sink, studying my face. I studied it just the same, taking in each feature, finding the careful order of each razor glide—but this time I saw to the bones beneath. The familiar nose and cheekbones, his jaw wound tightly in silence, like my own. I saw past the bones to the breath that we share. I saw all the way past Pap-Pap too, to a boat that staggered across the sea, to Italy, to a land without name, to far before that, to Eden, to another Adam—the one that shriveled priest spoke of in his sermon at the wake.
As I studied my grandfather’s face like a mirror, I no longer wondered how my face defines me.
