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From the novel Westlake Village by Harry Buschman
© by Harry Buschman
CHAPTER TEN
Christ in the Snow
Thanksgiving Day at Vinnie Esposito's house on Roxbury Drive is the signal to get started on the Christmas decorations. Vinnie lives in Westlake Village, a nondescript little town wedged between Castle Gardens and East Prospect.
It takes Vinnie and his two teenage sons, Spencer and Lloyd, a full month to string their lights, set up the illuminated and animated manger, and mount the twelve tiny reindeer on the roof. But, unseen by the people of the Village, Vinnie has been working since last Christmas on his holy figures and their costumes. Christmas is a big deal with Vinnie Esposito.
During the festive month of December, four thousand people from neighboring towns will drive past the Esposito's modest home on Roxbury Drive and check on the progress of the Christmas display. The Westlake Village "Guardian" features a photographic record and a regular report. The electric company, girding themselves for the power drain, promises Vinnie Esposito an uninterrupted supply of electricity. Christmas is an emotional time for people of Latin origin. It certainly is for Vinnie and Rose. Even though they are second generation Italians and no longer familiar with the language and customs of the old country, Christmas is a call to arms.
Vinnie made his
final break with the past when he named his two sons, Spencer and Lloyd. Rose,
who would have preferred Joseph and Dominick, shrugged her
shoulders, crossed herself and sighed; the naming of the children is the father's
privilege.
Vinnie is a tile mason .... bathroom floors and walls. He is used to taking orders, not giving them. He has a good strong back, callouses on his knees and completely devoted to Rose and their two strapping teenagers. But when Christmas decoration time arrives Vinnie becomes an autocratic figure -- an il Duce! His love of the Savior is displayed with an iron will, and he expresses it in the same gaudy fashion as those revered artists of the Renaissance.
During the summer
months and into fall he rents space in a warehouse downtown
and works on his figurines and multiple light show displays. He rents a U-Haul
every December to cart the reindeer, the Santas, the Holy Three, the Wise Men
and the menagerie of domestic animals that reflect his conception of that magic
night two thousand years ago.
Vinnie and Rose began in a small way with the obligatory wreath on the front door, but when the children came along, the Yule spirit evolved into an obsession. The wreath was flanked by tall red candles .... then garlands of holly, and blinking bubble lights under the eaves. A strange and hitherto and unsuspected competitive frenzy goaded Vinnie into outdoing the decorations of his neighbors. Eventually they threw in the towel. Now they, along with the rest of us in Westlake Village, gasp in wonder at the Christmas miracle of Roxbury Drive.
By the twentieth of December the panorama is complete. Mary is rocking the cradle just as Lillian Gish did in "Intolerance" -- but with every beat, a halo blinks on and off above the head of the Holy Infant. The three Wise Men stand by offering elaborately wrapped plastic packages with logos of expensive Madison Avenue shops. Animals of all kinds are in abundance -- Vinnie is not a naturalist so he's included pandas, penguins and porcupines not realizing that those species never existed in the holy land. The human figures are second hand mannequins purchased from Hess's department store many years ago. They gaze at the Christ child with the frozen stare of dummies, clothed in gorgeous robes bought from Harry's Costume Parlor in Castle Gardens. Mary, for example, wears a replica of Nancy Reagan's inaugural ball gown.
Heavy rain and high wind can be a problem, but not as tragic as deep snow. Deep snow inhibits the visitors to Roxbury Drive. Vinnie, therefore, has contracted with a plowing company to keep Roxbury Drive snow free until the fifteenth of January.
We don't have
to be reminded that man's grandest designs, his most glorious
inspirations, are often thwarted by the forces of nature. The Titanic and the
Hindenburg are two examples of man's impotence in the face of natural disaster.
Nature exhibited this force to the Esposito's just prior to the Christmas of
1995.
A low pressure area in the vicinity of the North Carolina coast made its appearance on the satellite map and an alert was sounded from there all the way up to Cape Cod. It promised the kind of weather all coastal dwellers fear. High winds and a mixture of rain, snow and sleet. As the storm approached Washington, D.C. it encountered an entrenched high and began to circle around it counter-clockwise. The temperature dropped quickly and the storm became a blizzard of enormous proportions. It slowly but inexorably worked its way up the coast in the direction of Westlake Village.
Vinnie's work was finished two nights before Christmas. He added an innovative addition this year. He installed a meandering walkway of duck boards leading around the back of the house and out to the front again. Along the way, the visitor would would walk through a miniature Bethlehem. It was as accurate as Vinnie's imagination and knowledge of the town as it existed in the year zero. It was the talk of the Village. The only other talk in town was the approaching storm, which by the day before Christmas was blanketing Pennsylvania with eighteen inches of snow.
It arrived in force at Roxbury Drive on Christmas Eve. It attacked the Village mercilessly -- like no blizzard ever had before. Winds of more than fifty miles an hour kept the snow from collecting on the ground, instead, it built up on the lee side of houses to the extent that the windows were soon covered. It snowed horizontally and soon the walls on the windward side of each and every house in the village was thickly plastered.
The visitors to Vinnie Esposito's Christmas pageant beat a hasty retreat when the wind picked up and the first flakes fell. By then the Christmas lights were coming undone and waved wildly in the stormy night. Santa was blown out of his sled on the roof, and two of the three Wise Men had fallen face down in the snow. Vinnie and Rose could no longer see the street from their living room windows . . . then . . .
"Mother of God!" Vinnie exclaimed, as every light in the house went out. The warm comforting rumble of the furnace in the basement shuddered to a stop, and the house grew colder almost immediately. They could see nothing and all they could hear was the ungodly howl of the wind in the eaves. Suddenly there was a rumble on the roof as the twelve tiny reindeer and the sled tobogganed into the front yard.
Vinnie tried to phone the electric company but couldn't get a dial tone. He remembered the oil lamps were down in the basement somewhere . . . but he couldn't recall where he last saw them, he couldn't remember where he left the flashlight either. He'd have to build a fire, but the wood was outside in the snow and he couldn't get the back door open. Spencer had some matches, and together, he and Lloyd found the oil lamps in the basement. They were bone dry -- Vinnie recollected there was a can of kerosene somewhere in the garage. The four of them stood together in the darkness -- all they could hear was the swishing of the snow on the outside walls, as though someone was shoveling sand against the side of the house; that, and the ungodly howl of the wind.
"Tell you
what, Pop," Spencer said, "We're gonna die in here without heat. There's
some rope down there in the basement -- you and Lloyd let me down outta the
upstairs bedroom and I'll get the goddam back door open."
"We'll lose you," his mother wailed, "and please, no 'goddam'
it's Christmas Eve."
Everyone but Rose
thought the risk worth taking, but the rest of the family convinced her it had
to be done. ("Oh Holy Father forgive my boy the goddam
and bring him safely to the ground below"). Spencer's bedroom window, now
a
pearl gray in the swirling snow, was on the lee side of the house. He rappelled
down the wall with Vinnie and Lloyd paying the rope out inch by inch.
" O.K., I'm
down .... I'm down .... " Spencer shouted.
Vinnie stuck his head out the window, "How deep is it?"
"Over my hips. But if I stay close to the house, I think I can get to the
back door. I should have brought a goddam shovel with me."
Rose wailed again. ("Oh Holy Father protect my eldest son .... grant him
the use of Thy name in vain!")
Spencer fought his way to the back door, and with nothing but his gloved hands, he managed to claw away the snow blocking the back door so that Vinnie and Lloyd could push it open. They brought in all the wood they could carry, then the three of them waded out to the garage to find the kerosene.
They had light and heat throughout that night as the storm raged outside. Toward morning it seemed to have snowed itself out and the wind calmed a bit. By standing on a chair and looking out the living room window Vinnie was able to see the frightening spectacle outside. The storm was over by noon and although it had snowed less than twenty four hours, the battery operated radio said there was 26 inches officially registered at the airport in East Prospect.
All signs of Vinnie's
Christmas pageant had disappeared. Even the waiting Christmas tree in the breezeway
had disappeared. Rose couldn't cook without
electricity, and the lights and the phone were gone. It seemed that the Yule
season had deserted the house on Roxbury Drive. They ate cold food for three
days and the four of them slept by the fireplace at night. Spencer and Lloyd
were suffering from cabin fever and with nothing to do when the battery operated
radio went dead they shoveled out most of the driveway.
On the morning of the 28th Vinnie saw blinking lights at the end of Roxbury Drive! They signaled the approach of the first snow plow. As it labored its way up the street and bulled its way past the house the blade excavated what appeared to be a human figure.
"Don't look,
Rose, don't look!" Vinnie pushed Rose from the window convinced
the plow had uncovered a victim of the storm. However, it was only Caspar, still
in his Richard the II regalia .... "Thank God," thought Vinnie ....
"it could have been Mary or Joseph!"
He threw on a coat and dashed out just as the plow braked to a halt.
"It's O.K., Mr. Esposito .... no problem, it's only one of your dummies."
Vinnie stopped in his tracks, and realized with growing horror that somewhere
under that heavy blanket of snow lay the Christ child and the virgin Mother,
along with Joseph and the entire city of Bethlehem. In tears, he gathered up
the broken body of Caspar.
"Vinnie! Come back in here," Rose pleaded from the front door. Vinnie
slowly turned to her, the tears freezing on his cheeks.
"The others, Rose . . . the others, where are the others?"
Dummies? No! They
were not dummies! To Vinnie they were the living breathing
symbols of the Christmas season. He left the shattered remains of Caspar by
the front door and went inside. At that moment, as though by magic, the phone
rang! .... every light in the house blazed into life and the furnace kicked
in.
"Holy shit, Pop! .... we're back in business," Spencer sang out. "C'mon
Lloyd, let's finish the driveway and check out the town."
("Excuse him for the 'shit' dear Lord -- he is young.") Rose answered
the phone. "It's the phone company, they say the phones are working."
"It's a fine
thing to know the phones are working." Half talking to himself, Vinnie
went on. "Like nothing ever happened .... like Christmas never happened.
Go on, you kids -- you go downtown, I don't wanna see no downtown .... I wanna
stay here with Mama. Mama, we get the turkey .... we start the Christmas dinner,
okay?" Without realizing it, Vinnie had slipped into the dialect of his
father.
"You okay Pop?" Spencer asked, "Ma, I think this has been too
much for him."
"Go ahead, I'm okay .... okay .... I was altar boy, did I tell you? that's
why Christmas Day .... always such a big deal with me. Altar boy .... the sun
through the stained glass windows, like here -- like the ice on the living room
window. Organ music .... incense .... Italian church .... mass in Latin, sermon
in Italian. Everybody believe in Christmas. In such a church no way a storm
could stop Christmas Day."
"He'll be" okay," Rose smiled for the first time in three days.
"He'll be fine. Go downtown. Be good ..... poppa and me we start dinner."
©Harry Buschman 1997
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