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totally-incorrect-theatre-quotes · 5 years ago

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After the Rain (fanfic)

Emily

By popular demand and my own impulsiveness here is Emily’s chapter. Just a fair warning that this fic overs most of Lydia’s childhood and peeks into her adulthood. At times it gets to be very OOC and refers to the canon within the mini-universe that is my fanfiction collection. Also don’t @me for making my OC Wendy end game haha.

Emily is a wonderful mother, this fanfic proves it, but uh...grab your tissues this is going to get sad at times

TW: Cancer, mentions of death, suicide mentioned, grief, bullying

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Emily knew. Lydia was about four or five years old when Emily got the first indication from a conversation lost to Lydia’s memory. The two of them were walking to the bodega down the street when they ran into the couple that lived in the other half of their duplex, they were a really nice couple with two children, including a son named David who was Lydia’s age and a new baby on the way. From conversation over the years, Emily had learned that the two of them had been together for almost ten years now and though they weren’t legally married they did everything a married couple would. She and Charles hosted them for dinner before while their kids had a playdate, Sara was a lawyer from an environmental company and Jessica was an accountant who got along famously with Emily’s real estate agent husband. Being only three at the time Lydia didn’t even notice anything about the situation, she just knew that the little boy from next door was a worth hide and seek opponent.

It had rained that afternoon so Lydia was preoccupied jumping up and down in every rain puddle she came across, her yellow rain jacket making her look like a little duck as she hopped down the street. Sara and Jessica must have gone down to the store and gotten caught in the storm because their hair was soaked as they walked up the street. Emily invited them over for game night that evening and the three of them started talking. Lydia paid no attention to the grown-up talk until she saw the two women hold each other’s hands, and the one lady kissing the other’s as they made a joke. She stared at them for a second and was disrupted when her mom bid them farewell and held onto Lydia’s hand once more and started walking towards the shops again.

“Mama how come they hold hands like you and daddy?”

Emily smiled gently at her curious but blunt daughter, “Because they love each other like me and daddy do. That’s why David has two mommies.”

Lydia’s eyes widened, “There can be two mommies?”

“There are lots of kinds of family’s sweetie. Sometimes it’s a mommy and a daddy, sometimes it’s two mommies or two daddies, sometimes it’s just one.”

“Are they married?”

Not wanting to discuss the long and complex history of trying to get marriage equality to a kindergartener Emily told her they were. The look on her face when she told her that was as if a light bulb had lit up in her tiny head. Very matter of factly Lydia looked up, smiled widely at Emily, her smile missing a few teeth that had become the property of the tooth fairy, and announced, “I want to marry a girl too!”

“That’s okay with me,” Emily chuckled unsure if anything would ever come of the conversation or if it would be another one of the musings of a child like how last week Lydia wanted to be a bird. Emily couldn’t tell the future, but no matter how it went she knew she’d love Lydia no matter what. Emily slightly hoped that the couple next door would be there while Lydia was growing up so that if she was, Lydia would never have to grow up thinking it was something abnormal. Unfortunately the next year Jessica had been offered a lucrative position in California and the whole family moved away, within a few months Lydia had almost completely forgotten about the family next door and they were instead replaced with an equally nice elderly couple that Lydia would always associate to be her childhood neighbors.

Lydia was a little older the second time Emily thought she knew. She was in the third grade making valentines for the Valentine’s Day party in school the next day, most the kids in her class would be receiving a paper card with a lollipop taped to it and a quick, messy scribble that was supposed to resemble Lydia’s signature. Only one card was neat looking, it was also the one on the packaging that Lydia had said was her favorite. It was a cartoon cat holding a heart that said: “Be my meowentine” and Lydia signed her name with her I dotted with a heart. Curious as to who this prized valentine was going to Emily glanced down at the name and didn’t recognize it from the mental list of kids Lydia was friends with. It was addressed to a girl named Chloe. Even the cards for the kids she was friends with didn’t look as nice as this one. Emily wondered if this new girl was suddenly Lydia’s best friend or if possibly Lydia had her first crush. Not wanting to embarrass her daughter she didn’t ask, but she could see the next day the disappointment in Lydia’s eyes when the card she didn’t even get a card from Chloe.

Lydia was ten years old when gay marriage was legalized in the United States. She was sitting at the kitchen table eating breakfast with her parents when they all heard it on the morning news. Nobody really had a strong reaction. Charles said something along the lines of how it was about time it was made legal and Emily thought back to that lovely couple that lived next door to them in the years past, wondering if they were celebrating the great news, not that they were never a family but now it was official. The life they had been living was now accepted by a majority of the country. Emily looked over to an obvious Lydia and was thrilled that her daughter was allowed to grow up in a time where love is love. Relieved that if Lydia was she wouldn’t have to hide it, and if she wasn’t that she could be an ally and appreciate the beautiful and diverse world they had to pleasure to live in.

Ever since she had started middle school Lydia had become really insecure and self-conscious, it was a hard change to see in her previously confident daughter. She was painfully aware of how cruel kids could be at that age. It’s such a confusing time in life that people often take their inner anguish out on other people. It doesn’t make it right but that’s a fact of adolescence. She wished she could give Lydia a skip button and just let her fast forward through the awkward years of middle school but she couldn’t. Lydia came home from school the one day musing about how pretty the one girl in her class was dressed, how nice her smile was, how smart and funny she was, always making jokes when the teacher wasn’t listening. Charles, a well-meaning, but not intuned to the more sensitive topics in life simply gave Lydia a pitiful look and told her, “Aw honey you’re beautiful too, you don’t have to compare yourself to them.”

It was very possible that that was what Lydia was doing but the way she talked about the girl reminded her of herself at that age when she had a crush on the boy who sat in front of her in English class. Lydia didn’t say anything more on the matter, simply thanking her father for the compliment and finishing her dinner quickly. Emily gave Charles a stern look but it was clear that he didn’t know what he did to upset her, to be fair Emily didn’t know if that was what had upset Lydia either, she hoped that if what she thought was true was true that she would have established enough trust that Lydia would feel comfortable telling her.

She didn’t make a habit of snooping on the things in Lydia’s room but one night when she was putting away laundry one of Lydia’s dresses had accidentally been washed with Charles’ shirts. Lydia was off to school that day and when Emily went into her room her laptop was still open and turned on, resting on her desk. She walked past and couldn’t help but notice the title of one of the tabs open. The Kinsey Scale Test. She didn’t click on the tab to see the results, those tests only tell you what you want to hear but it was confirmation that Lydia was indeed questioning it. Respectfully she didn’t bring it up, knowing that if she was ready she would bring it up herself.

Emily didn’t want to leave. She wasn’t ready to die, she didn’t want to lose Charles or leave Lydia alone but it wasn’t like she had a choice in the matter. The cancer had metastasized to her spinal cord and she had a three percent chance to live the next six months. She wasn’t scared of dying, she wasn’t particularly religious, she didn’t care what happened next, but she was so afraid of what this would do to Lydia. She was so young, she needed a mother still. There was so much of her daughter’s life she was going to miss. She was never going to get to see Lydia start high school, or take her to buy a dress for her first dance, or help her work through her first broken heart. She’ll never get to see Lydia find what she’s passionate about, she’ll never help Lydia fill out college applications or watch her open acceptance letters. She’ll never see Lydia graduate and go to college, she won’t have to hold back tears when her baby girl moves out. She won’t get to meet the people Lydia wants to share her life with, or meet the person she marries, or the children she has if she wants then. She’s going to miss everything that happened in her daughter’s life and there was nothing she could do about it. All Emily ever wanted was for Lydia to be happy and to have a good life and now she’ll never get to know how it all turns out.

She wanted so badly to focus on the now, she was still here right now and Lydia needed her but she couldn’t help but to get lost reminiscing on the past or lamenting on a future she’ll never have. Over the weeks and months leading up to the end, she couldn’t even leave the hospital, it was nothing but the same four white walls as they tried to treat the cancer just trying to give her more time. Charles and Lydia kept her company when they could but Emily could tell when it was all becoming too much for the fourteen-year-old. She had to deal with all of this on top of all the other things going on in the life of an eighth-grader. She didn’t go to school much during the last month, she was given extensions on all her work and told to just focus on family and though Lydia desperately wanted to be there all the time Emily and Charles would insist that she would sleep at home and spend at least one day a week being with kids her age. She knew Lydia was still being bullied, most people pulled back knowing about the whole cancer situation but some kids just used that even more. Emily frequently caved when Lydia would stall going home, insisting that she wasn’t tired but twenty minutes later she would be peacefully sleeping curled up on a hospital chair or snuggled up like a kitten at the foot of Emily’s bed. She didn’t know how many more nights she would get with Lydia, and even though she was fourteen Emily relished in the nights when her daughter would fall asleep in her embrace, all the stress and worry melting from her face as she slept. Emily’s thoughts drifting from memory to memory of Lydia growing up, and though she was so grown-up she could still see that little baby she cradled all those years ago. The toddler that would terrorize the house during the day but look like an angel in her crib. The little girl who would run off the school bus after school and play all night until she fell asleep in the crook of Emily’s arm when reading a bedtime story, using all the funny voices that made Lydia giggle. She wondered where all the years had gone, and when Lydia had grown up.

There was something on Lydia’s mind, she could tell. She could see it in her eyes but she didn’t know what. There was so much going on in her life that it could have been anything, but whatever it was it was conflicting Lydia. It was a very noticeable change in her demeanor. She avoided certain topics, she got defensive when a well-meaning nurse mused about how any boy would be lucky to date her. Lydia was sitting with her in the hospital bed watching some sappy soap-opera on the hospital television, and when a lesbian couple kissed on-screen Lydia trained her eyes down on the floor, not like she was disgusted but like she was ashamed.

Every once and a while she would go to talk but stop herself as if she was doubting what she wanted to say. Emily tried to assure her they could talk about anything but Lydia would just change the subject saying it wasn’t important. What was important to her was being there. Everyone was aware when the end was coming, they knew it would be soon but they didn’t know exactly when it was going to happen. The third week of December Emily took a turn for the worse, she was rushed into the intensive care unit and Charles was told to bring the family to say their goodbyes.

She died on the Eighteenth of December. A day that forever would invoke nothing but grief and heartache in Lydia. A puzzle that would never be fully complete no matter how many pieces she added because something would always be missing. It had taken her a long time to be okay. It had literally taken her a demon and a near-death experience to give her a new lease on life and while she still missed her mother very dearly every day, she was able to go on with her life. Something that she had almost cut short twice because she was so blind with grief and hurt. She learned to be more comfortable with herself. Slowly she had told people the truth, beginning by telling herself the truth as she looked at her reflection in the mirror. Telling her father had been hard but she felt stronger once she had, like she wasn’t so alone anymore. She had a variety of coming out stories from accidentally telling Delia, to the tearfully and serious conversation with the Maitlands, to the very casual statement told to Beetlejuice. She felt loved and supported, though she was still bullied and she had her heart broken she rebounded quickly. She met a girl she liked and after a while, she was proud to call Wendy her girlfriend. She was welcomed into the Blackwood family with open arms, and over time they two of them just got closer. The summer before her sophomore year the whole family took a trip to New York and went to Lydia’s first pride parade. She knew her community was large but she couldn’t help but to gasp in awe of just how many people there were like her, proud to be who they were. While the crowd could be overwhelming at times Lydia would always think fondly of the memory, and no matter how many parades she went to afterward that one would always be her favorite.

There were hard times too. Every December was hard for Lydia, she would retreat into herself and unintentionally push people away. It took her time to learn to let people in and be there for her and she learned how to be there better for him. There were plenty of times where Lydia wished her mother had been there. In her junior year, she and Wendy had broken up. They had a silly argument that neither of them remembered but it lead to them being broken up for almost half a year before Lydia realized she didn’t want to lose her and asked her to prom. During first few weeks of the break-up, she wanted nothing more than to have her mother by her side eating ice cream and talking about their feelings. Barbara, Delia, and Beetlejuice were more than willing to fill the role, she appreciated it but it wasn’t the same. She had her father save a seat for Emily at her graduation and she blew a kiss to the empty seat when she received her diploma. Lydia kept up with therapy over the years, going less frequently but she still touched base at least once a month but she learned skills to cope better. A task that once seemed impossible was now one of her favorite coping mechanisms, in the drawer of her dorm desk was a shoebox filled with letters for her mom that she had written whenever she needed to get something off her chest. Some were emotional and hard for her to write, others were her sharing good news, a once and a while some would simply be what she did that day. She never knew what to do with them, she knew nobody would ever read them but she couldn’t bring herself to throw them away.

She beat herself up a lot about how she had never had to courage to tell her mother she was gay before she died. She knew her mom would have been accepting but at fourteen she wasn’t sure of anything anymore. There was so much happening during that time of her life that the lowest priority was coming out. She kept it a secret and it was a regret of her that haunted her for years. She would eventually come to terms with it and the fact that she couldn’t change the past.

Years and years had passed. She was now all grown up, buying a house in Connecticut with Wendy right next door to the place she called her home from the time she was fifteen. She had built a life for herself that she was proud of. Her unconventional family was a beautiful and chaotic mess and she added to the chaos by marrying Wendy and adding two children to their family. They adopted a two-year-old boy that, much to the dismay of Beetlejuice, came with the name Lawrence and they welcome a baby girl that Wendy and Lydia unanimously decided to name Emma. Lydia was never shy about telling her kids about her family, they were aware from a very young age that their one grandma was in the Netherworld and though they had a lot of questions about everyone else in the family their normal included Charles, Delia, Wendy’s parents and brothers, their Uncle BJ and the ghost-grandparents who nearly bawled when the met the kids for the first time. Their unique family definitely earned some concerned questions when Lawrence and Emma’s pre-school drawings included two ghosts and a demon.

The children were six and four when Lydia finally thought they were ready. They packed up the car for the trip and drove an hour and a half back to New York City. They planned to do some sightseeing while they were there but most of their trip was welcomed with rain and thunderstorms. On the last day of the trip, they got the kids dressed, Lawrence in a red raincoat and Emma in a yellow polka-dot raincoat that made her look like a little duck when she jumped up and down in the puddles as they walked on the sidewalk. They arrived a the cemetery, Lydia’s memory drifting back to a dark time in her life where she felt so invisible and alone. She held tightly onto Wendy and her kids as they walked over to the spot. A grey colored tombstone with the words etched: “Emily Deetz. Devoted wife to Charles, Beloved mother to Lydia.”

Lydia gently placed a bouquet of red roses on top of the tombstone while she held back a tear. The rain had stopped before they got out of the car and the sun was peeking out from behind the trees illuminating the field in a golden-orange glow. Looking up at the sky Lydia pointed to her kids the rainbow in the distance. She took in a shaky breath, she had been waiting years to finally tell her. She thought she’d be more nervous, more emotional but she kissed the back of Wendy’s hand and said, “Hey mom, there are some people I want you to meet.”

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