Can You Come out to Play?

(June 7, 2017)


9: Rough Landing

Wednesday morning.

Here's what they came up with: At Vlad's suggestion, Priscilla would spend some time at Ford's house with Lorena as hostess. Stanford was still attending to the last details of his Institute's first year—a successful year, 124 students entering, 122 completing the year of study, with applications enough already from returning and new students for him and Fiddleford to boost the student population cap to 148, more than that and they'd have to hire new staff.

Anyway, Stanford was off busy being a university president, or the equivalent thereof, and Stanley thought he would only be in the way, so Mabel, Wendy, and Dipper were on hand to distract Pacifica while the older ladies visited.

And they visited with a vengeance. Priscilla, at first uncharacteristically shy—in her own circle she used to be treated nicely by other very rich wives, and she could match them in suggestive and slightly ribald repartee, although she knew that behind her back they called her "upstart" and "pushy." She, after all, was only second-generation money, not the real old bonded stuff.

By contrast with the ladies who lunched, Lorena and Sheila—seemed to like her.

That was the huge difference.

Simple as that.

And knowing it nearly unnerved Priscilla. She hadn't, she realized, had friends—real friends, not merely peers whose husbands money made them idle and inclined to bitchiness—since high school!

Sheila had a kind of humor and an openness and honesty that disarmed her, and soon the three of them were laughing and chatting about everything under the sun. Just like old friends.

Sheila remembered when Priscilla won a championship tournament as a college tennis player, making Priscilla blush with pride. But then, frowning, she said, "I still play, but you know something? Coach Allbright was such a hateful dictator that I secretly hate the game!"

"That's a shame," Sheila said. "You're so good at it."

"But that man was worse than having two fathers. I had to keep a log of everything I ate. He had to know who I went to the movies with, and how late I got back. Once three of us cut classes to go off to the beach—and he tailed us there, parked behind us, and dressed the other two girls down, right in front of me. He forced me to get in his car, drove me back to campus, and marched me to the lit class I'd cut, which was already half over. It was humiliating, and I got to despise tennis."

"Try playing just for fun," Lorena suggested. "Play as if it doesn't matter if you win or lose, and neither of you cares."

Sheila agreed: "A friendly game."

"Do you play?" Priscilla asked them.

Lorena said, "Once a week, at the Lakeside Country Club."

Sheila said, "I used to, but I haven't picked up a racquet in ten years. I'd love to start again, though. I'd need someone to give me pointers, I'd be so rusty."

"I'll—" Priscilla said impulsively. Then she fell silent.

"You'll help me?" Sheila suggested.

"If—if you'd like. My hus—Preston's a member of the Country Club, but we haven't been back there since, you know, the end-of-the-world thing—"

"Weirdmageddon," Lorena said. "Has Pacifica told you about her role in that?"

Pacifica? Priscilla shook her head. "She only said the Pines family defeated Bill Cipher."

Sheila leaned forward and put her hand on Priscilla's. "There's a lot more to it than that. You need to know how heroic your daughter was in never-mind-all-that."

"Heroic?" Priscilla's eyebrows rose. "Pacifica?"

Lorena laughed. "Just get Mabel alone sometime and ask her, 'What did Pacifica do during Weirdmageddon?' She'll tell you. You'll be amazed at her courage. She escaped from the monsters, made herself an emergency dress when hers was ripped to shreds, survived, and made her way to the Mystery Shack, where Stanley kept her and a lot of others safe."

"And when they attacked Bill Cipher, Pacifica went right into the Fearamid," Sheila said. She'd heard the story a dozen times from Stan, who was incredibly proud of his niece and nephew—and of Pacifica. Stan's heart had room for lots of kids. "She got catapulted into the air and went in by parachute! And the reason she volunteered for that was—she knew you and your husband had been captured, and she was determined to rescue you."

Captured. Priscilla couldn't talk about that experience—still. She remembered being frozen into statue form—she even remembered being a part of Cipher's Throne of Human Agony, because despite Cipher's claim that the petrified victims weren't conscious any longer—probably—in fact they were, frozen, paralyzed, horror-struck. It was too much.

However, she said softly, "I remember when we came out of that awful trance and could move again, Pacifica was the first person we saw, running up to hug us. That was the first time in years that we felt like a family. The last time, almost, when I thought there was some—some hope for us."

"Don't be too quick to give up," Lorena said. "Dr. Raventree is going to have a long talk with Mr. Northwest. If anyone can show him the error of his ways—"

"That's the trouble," Priscilla said. "Preston doesn't think they're errors. He thinks they're virtues."


And meanwhile, Dipper, Wendy, and Mabel were spiriting Pacifica right out of the Valley, and Mabel was in the back seat with her, having a very serious conversation, by Mabel standards.

As the Dodge Dart headed north, Mabel said to Pacifica, "Listen, after today, all summer long, I want to hang with you as much as possible."

"I don't know if Mom and I will even stay in Gravity Falls," Pacifica said. "But if we do, I'd love that."

"You ought to think about coming to Olmsted," Mabel said. "They got a great fine-arts program. You could be like a museum curator or art collector! And closer to home, we gotta hook you up with a summer romance!" Mabel said.

"Come on, Mabel," Wendy said from the front seat. "Don't pressure her like that, OK?"a She was driving Dipper, Mabel, and Pacifica up to her aunt Sallie's farm. Pacifica had never been there, and Mabel was eager for her to see Waddles and Widdles in full hog-bloom and to pet Geepers, Gompers's half-sheep, half-goat offspring.

They arrived early in the morning. "Stay put for a minute and watch this," Mabel said, getting out of the back seat of Wendy's Dodge Dart. She bellowed, "Chickens of the farm, assemble!"

Pacifica watched with wide eyes as a flock, almost an army, of Rhode Island Reds scrambled from all directions to cluster around Mabel, looking at her expectantly and with fowl admiration. Mabel barked an order: "Form . . . ranks!"

The older chickens did, lining up in orderly rows. The hens had to chivvy the hatchlings and the yearlings into line—they had not yet met Mabel, to whom the farm's flock had evidently sworn eternal chicken loyalty years ago. Mabel put them through a close-order drill. It would have disgraced a Marine platoon, but as chicken drills went, it wasn't all that bad.

Guinea fowl—Pacifica had never seen one and didn't know what they were—came scurrying over. Not as disciplined as their cousins the chickens, the gray birds thickly speckled with white rushed around more as a mob than a troop, watching the parade and commenting loudly, the young ones peeping, the hens sounding like rusty door hinges, and the males demanding, "Whaaa?" in squawky voices.

Sallie Corduroy, ramrod-straight and smiling as always, came out on the porch, met Pacifica and told her to make herself right at home and then went back inside—she was baking, and the cinnamon aroma of a cooking apple pie scented the air momentarily—and then Mabel led them all to the barn, with an honor guard of chickens marching along on either side of them.

Waddles immediately squealed with delight and came rushing over to have his ears tickled. Widdles wanted Mabel to scratch her head. They were both full-grown now—but not, Dipper noticed, as hoggishly fat as they had been. They were also immaculately clean, having learned at the Shack not to indulge in mud unless the day was exceedingly hot. That Wednesday was mild, so they both shone in pink pig radiance.

Aunt Sallie fed the pigs well and saw to it that they had plenty of room for exercise, and both of them were leaner and probably healthier than they had been at the Shack, where they lazed all day and in the summers ate mostly sugary or fatty snacks that Mabel constantly smuggled to them.

Gompers treated them with his usual slit-eyed, indifferent glance and then aloofness, but Geepers, an odd-looking creature with the wool of a sheep and the features of a goat, came bounding up as if his legs were pogo sticks and bounced around them, calming down enough at last to let Pacifica pet his woolly head.

Then there were the fields. Some of the strawberries and boysenberries were ripe, and they got a couple of pails and did some picking. Wendy found a freakishly large boysenberry, a deep maroon fruit like a strawberry and a blackberry had a child, and gave it to Pacifica, who'd never tasted one. "I can eat it?" Pacifica asked. "It doesn't have to be disinfected or anything?"

"Aunt Sallie doesn't use any pesticides to speak of," Wendy told her. "The chickens and the guineas take care of most of the insects, and the fruit's been basking in the sun and washed by the rain, so it's clean. Here." She ate a smaller one. "See?"

Pacifica tentatively bit into the boysenberry. "It's good," she said. She frowned in concentration. "Juicy! It's a little like . . . um, sort of strawberry, and sort of blackberry, but it's tangy, too."

"Yeah, we won't pick a lot," Wendy said. "Light touch, 'cause when you touch one, it drops right off. Be careful, the plants are spiny. These don't keep worth a darn, so we'll get enough to eat a few and then Aunt Sallie may make a cobbler."

All in all, they wound up with about a quart of boysenberries and a pint of strawberries, which they just ate straight off the bushes. When they got back to the farmhouse, Aunt Sallie was just getting lunch ready—fried chicken, fresh biscuits (hers, Wendy swore, were the best in the state of Oregon), buttery mashed potatoes, green beans ("Frozen," she apologized—her own weren't quite ready to pick yet), and two large fresh tomatoes that she had sliced.

Dipper took a little of everything but the tomatoes. He ate them now—he'd overcome a childhood aversion—but liked them more as a sandwich component than a side dish. But the fried chicken had a crispy coating and the meat practically melted off the bone, and everything else was delicious. The apple pie, hefty and thick and full of cinnamon-spiced sweet apples, just put the crown on the meal.

Pacifica felt dazed. Aunt Sallie's home-cooked lumberjack's lunch was to the food Pacifica had been eating in Greasy's Diner as Chaimovich's performance of Chopin's "Nocturne in E-flat major" was to a kindergarten class playing "Camptown Races" on kazoo, rhythm sticks, and triangle. For once in her life, Pacifica ate as if calories did not count. And with Mabel cheering her on, she felt absolutely no guilt.

What a change.


At about the same time, Wellington, seated at the breakfast-nook table in the Northwest house, cocked his head, laid down his cards—three Queens, not a bad hand, and he took the seventy-five-cent pot. "I hear the helicopter," he said. "That will be Mr. Northwest."

Stan looked at Vlad, who shrugged in a what-will-be-will-be way. "Shall we go meet him?"

"I would suggest that you wait in the front parlor until he comes into the house," Wellington said. "He will have an assistant helping with the luggage. Please wait in the parlor, and I will announce him."

They agreed, but they couldn't resist holding back and peeking out the side door window. Wellington had stepped out to the far side of the porte-cochere and waited. They saw the gleaming helicopter touch down beyond the barn, making the pasture grass wave like the North Atlantic, and a few minutes later, Northwest, dressed as usual in dark-gray business suit, came striding toward the house, followed by a scrambling young man who toted two heavy-looking suitcases. Wellington relieved the younger man of his burdens, and Preston said something. The assistant hustled back toward the helicopter. Wellington came toward the door, lugging both suitcases, and at that point Vlad and Stan retreated to the parlor but left the door ajar.

They heard Preston ask, "Where is Priscilla?"

"Resting, sir," said Wellington, his voice so soft they had to strain for the words. "You have visitors, sir, in the reception parlor."

Outside, the helicopter took off, the roar momentarily drowning out the faint voices. Then they heard Preston asking, "—who the blazes are they, then?"

Wellington's polite answer came: "I can't say, sir."

The door opened, and Preston, holding a small, beautifully wrapped package with a gold bow, stepped in. "I'm not planning on doing business today—" he said irritably before recognizing his visitors.

"Preston Northwest!" said Vlad in a commanding tone, "Money is nothing but fancy-colored paper!"

Northwest swayed on his feet as if he had been punched by a strong hand wearing brass knuckles, one of which just happened to be in the room, but safely stored in Stan's pocket.

"You are asleep, yes?" Vlad asked.

"Yes," Northwest said in a dull voice.

"Good, good. This will take some time, you should sit down, be comfortable. Which is your favorite chair in this room?"

"I don't have one."

"Then take any."

Preston moved as though sleepwalking to the largest chair, an ornate wingback.

"Figures he'd choose the closest thing to a throne," Stan muttered.

When Preston sat down, Vlad said, "Now, listen to me. Hear only my voice. You are going even deeper into this nice sleep. Deeper and deeper. I want you should imagine you have stepped into a private elevator. It is going from the top floor, ten, to the bottom floor, one. You step in. You press the button for one. Each floor you go down, you're going deeper into such a pleasant sleep. Ten. Nine. Eight. . . ."

By the time the elevator arrived, Preston was deep under a hypnotic trance. "You won't hear me until I say your name," Vlad told him. Then to Stan he asked, "You want I should make him act like a chicken? Once I got a guy to lay an actual egg, no lie. It's kind of entertaining."

Straining not to give an endorsement of the idea, Stan said, "Nnnno. Hell, he's a guy. Bad as he is, we don't want to humiliate him yet. If we do somethin' to him, let it be for a reason."

Vlad nodded. "You are a better man than you want people to know, Stanley. OK, here we go. Maybe we should ask Wellington does he have any of those what you call them, barf bags handy. We may need them." Then, taking off his jacket, the old vampire said, "Preston Northwest!"

"I hear you," Northwest murmured.

"We are going to talk about some serious things," Vlad warned. "You will not hesitate but will always tell us the truth." Since this was Northwest, Vlad repeated that twice and made Preston repeat the words, too, and agree to them.

And then it began.


Quite late that afternoon Wellington drove over to Stanford's house and brought Priscilla and Pacifica—just them—back to the Northwest farmhouse. They came into the living room, saw Preston, and visibly stiffened.

"Now, now," Vlad said in his kindest voice. "We are gonna clear the air a little bit here. Nobody's all the way to blame. Well, your husband and your dad is mostly to blame, but we're gonna talk it out, get a few facts on the table that maybe you did not know. I want you should both sit down and relax."

In twenty seconds he had both Pacifica and her mother in a light trance. "Now. Preston," he said, "can you hear me?"

"Yes."

"And Mrs. Priscilla and Miss Pacifica, you can hear me too, correct?"

"Yes," the two said in unison.

"And you can all hear each other. Preston, you first. Why were you upset when Pacifica and my nephew Daniel stopped seeing each other?"

In a matter-of-fact way, Preston said, "Priscilla and I have given Pacifica every advantage. Daniel comes from a wealthy family. He is a good financial and social match for our daughter and would have been a very acceptable husband for her. And when they broke up, I lost some important leverage over the Raventree family and their money."

"Why is money so important to you?"

"A man measures his success by money."

"Mm-hmm," Vlad said thoughtfully. "Ever think what's going to be when you get old, when your wife has left you, when your daughter won't even talk to you? A pile of loot is gonna make you a success, you think? Money going to help you then?"

"That won't happen," Northwest said.

"Miss Priscilla, would you leave your husband? Don't anybody get emotional, this is ideas we're talking here, not feelings. Would you?"

"Yes," Priscilla said. "I love Preston, but he runs my whole life. I can't stand to watch him turn Pacifica into a robot—like me."

"You hear that, Preston? What do you say to that?"

"I—didn't realize Priscilla felt that way," Preston said. "I thought she enjoyed all the advantages my wealth gave her."

"Pacifica? Darling, tell your poppa what you did, how you were feeling."

Pacifica said, "I can get along without Father. I took a job. It was hard, but I could make it on my own. Mom and I together could make a living. I know when I'm twenty-one I'll get an income of a hundred thousand dollars a year for the rest of my life from a trust fund. Until then, I can work as a waitress or a cleaning lady or a maid."

"Do you want to leave your father?"

"I do. Because of what he did."

Vlad said, "I think maybe he doesn't know yet, or maybe doesn't admit it. You tell your poppa what he did to you, back in March."

In a detached voice, as if she were reciting a recipe, Pacifica said, "Daddy was negotiating with five men. One of them was Mr. Lee. He is about fifty years old and is fat and grotesque. Daddy wants these five men to buy one of his businesses and establish it in Asia. One evening Daddy told me to go to Mr. Lee's room because he wanted to ask me some things about American schools. He was thinking of sending his granddaughter here to be educated. I went to the room and knocked and he opened the door and told me to come in and strip. He was naked."

Stan noticed that Preston convulsively gripped the arms of his chair, though he didn't rise or say anything.

"What did you do?" Vlad asked.

"I ran. I ran to the foyer and grabbed my purse and drove away in my car. I drove all night, just around the Valley. Finally I needed gas. My card wouldn't work. I had some cash. I found out the next morning all my accounts were cancelled. I went to the diner for breakfast. Lazy Susan asked me what was wrong. I told her I couldn't go home again. She didn't ask me details. I told her I couldn't go back to my parents. She offered me a job and helped me find a room. That's what happened."

"Preston, what do you have to say?"

Preston's face turned beet red. "I didn't know! I swear, Huan Lee seemed like a nice man! I thought he wanted to ask Pacifica about school—he told me she despised him because of his race and called him nasty names—"

"Pacifica, is this true?"

"No. That's a lie. All he said was 'Come in and get undressed.' I didn't speak to him at all."

"Preston," Vlad said, "this is the absolute truth, what your daughter tells you. Priscilla, why is it you think your husband didn't immediate know there was something real wrong there?"

"Preston doesn't pay attention to us when he has a business deal in the works," Priscilla said. "I'm sorry, but it's true."

"OK. Now, I'm gonna wake you guys up. Listen carefully. I'm gonna watch, see what happens, anything starts out that should be stopped, I'm gonna say 'Under!' just like that, poof, you all go back to sleep. But when you wake up, you're gonna be calm. You'll remember what happened, and together you decide where we go from here. And if you feel, now show your feelings! Ready? I'll count, and at zero, you wake up. Three. Two. One. And zero, wake up now."

For a moment all three just stared at each other. And then Preston lunged out of his chair. Vlad opened his mouth to stop it, because frankly it looked as if Preston was going to strangle his daughter, and under the same impression, Stan yelled and stepped forward—

No.

Northwest fell heavily on his knees in front of Pacifica, shaking and sobbing. "I didn't know!" he said. "As God is my witness, Pacifica, I didn't know what a—what a scum—how evil that man was! I should have gone with you, I see that, but—baby, I'm so sorry! I don't deserve it, but could you forgive me?"

Than somehow all the Northwests were hugging. For some moments they were incoherent, but then Preston stood up and said, "I have one piece of business to do."

Priscilla looked stricken, but Preston kissed her cheek. "This won't take long." He took out his phone and called a number. "Pete. Preston here. No, not coming in today, but listen. This is important. Call Huan Lee. Yes, him. Write this down. This is my message to him: The deal is off. If you ever set foot in the States again, I'll have you arrested. No, Pete, tell him exactly that. I'm serious. I know how much it means. Pete, don't argue. Send the message. I'll talk to you tomorrow. Some changes are coming."

His face still wet with tears, Preston said, "All right. This has gone far enough. I'm going to end it. Priscilla, by August, I'll be completely retired. I'll do the job I should have been doing all along—I'm going to be a real husband and I'm going to try to be a real father. I'm so sorry. I—what can I say? I was blind! But—I don't want to be an old dying rich man all alone in the world. Pacifica, I'll let you do and be whatever you want. Priscilla, we'll do things together again, like when we first married, whatever you want to do. I think we'll have more than enough money for the rest of our lives, and if we don't, hell, I can be a busboy at Greasy's!"

"Come," Vlad said to Stanley.

In the car on the way back, Stan asked, "You think this will take?"

Vlad shrugged. "Who knows?" Vlad said. "Important thing, this burden is theirs. From here on, we don't interfere. Oh, if Miss Pacifica runs away, needs a friend, or Mrs. Priscilla has to find a place to stay, that's different. Help them if the need comes But right now, the important thing is—they gotta try to make a family. The odds maybe are against them."

"Well," Stan said. "I think if they'll just unbend a little bit and Preston will stop chasin' every dime, they'll find they got more friends in town than they know. People here forgive easy."

"That is good," Vlad said. "That alone evens the odds a little bit. So. I did my best, is all I can say. I'll stop by again one more time, drop in as Dr. Raventree, see how the family is doing. But I won't do that in the next couple days, let them get to know each other again first. I'll do it after."

"After what?" Stan asked.

"After you and me take at least five thousand each from some pigeons down in Vegas. You still game?"

"Ha!" Stan said. "Vlad, I'll tell ya—THOSE odds, I like!"