Partners by Fate
by
Owlcroft.
A/N: This is totally self-indulgent. But I get to be self-indulgent once in a while, right? Right?
Dinner at the Juice house that night was one of seven-year-old Chazz's favorites – meatloaf and green beans. He and his twelve-old sister still referred to it as meatmush with moldy worms, which is what their father had always called it. Beetlejuice had his 'meatmush' raw and ignored the faux worms, but it was always a meal cheerfully enjoyed by the whole family.
"You got your homework done, Trix?" her father asked, nearly replete.
She shook her head, swallowed a mouthful of 'worms', and said, "All but an essay. I have all week to write it but I want to get it started tonight."
Chazz held out his plate to his mother and raised his eyebrows at her for a second helping. "Please?" he said with a small smile.
As she obliged, Lydia spoke to her daughter. "What's the topic? Can we help?"
Beatie nodded emphatically. "My teacher said to ask how my parents met and then write about it."
Lydia and Beetlejuice looked at each other. "I guess we never told you two how we met, did we?" Lydia said. "After supper, then, okay? We'll all go to the parlor and Papa and I will tell both of you all the gory details." She grinned at them and everyone at the table grinned back at her.
ooooo
Comfortably full of mush and worms, Beetlejuice and Lydia sat side by side on the parlor couch, with Beatie and her notepad on the floor in front of them. Chazz was a little off to one side with his train set.
"Okay, chickies: How Your Mama and I Met." Beetlejuice frowned a little in concentration, then began. "One day, years ago, I used the old beetle and juice carton trick and got some chowderhead to Call me over to a little town in Connecticut – Peaceful Pines. I didn't know that's where he was, and I didn't much care. I was just feeling bored and figured I could have some fun over there, scaring people and raising a little . . . um, playing some pranks, so I spent a couple of hours doing that and then I got hungry." He held out his hand to his wife at that point. She took it and smiled reminiscently. "You know one of the best places to find lunch is in a bunch of trees, right? Under the dead leaves and the moss and in the crevices of the bark. Sometimes you get really lucky and there are termites. Yum! But then I like spicy stuff." He broke off suddenly. "Trix, don't put that in your essay!"
Lydia snorted. "I think I might have to edit that paper before it's turned in anyway." She squeezed his hand a little. "And what exactly did you find in the woods next to Father's place?" she asked with an intimate smile.
"Well," he smiled back, "as it happened, I found my heart's desire. But I didn't know it then. I was just looking for snacks, but instead I found something . . . something I'd never seen before." He looked at the two children seated on the floor. "I saw a little girl –" he broke off suddenly and bit his lip at the memory. He took a breath, then resumed. "A little girl who was crying her heart out."
Lydia moved closer to him and rested her head on his shoulder.
"I didn't know what to do." He rubbed his cheek on the top of Lydia's head. "I never . . . I never felt like that before, kind of confused but desperate. I had to help her. I had to make her feel better, stop her crying. But I didn't know how. So I sat down next to her – she hadn't seen me yet – and said . . . Do you remember the first thing I said to you, Lyds?" he asked.
"You said," Lydia assumed her gruffest voice, "Hi, how ya doin'?" She chuckled. "I must've jumped a foot in the air. It turns out I'm pretty good at the sitting high jump. That was just about the only time you scared me, you know."
"And I didn't even mean to. And you weren't scared for long. You kind of crawled away backwards and asked me who I was. 'Course I couldn't tell you that. So," Beetlejuice turned back to his children, "I said I was just a guy from around there and she sounded to me like somebody who needed some help. Was she hurt? Was she scared? Was she sick? And then your Mama –" he removed his hand from hers to put his arm around her, "told me she was sad because she was so lonely. That she didn't have any friends at all; nobody liked her or wanted her for a friend."
Beatie stopped writing furiously to stare and Chazz wore an expression of disbelief at this statement, but Lydia nodded at them.
"It's true," she confirmed. "We'd just moved there and I'd never really had any friends at all. And the kids at my new school thought I was just too strange, too different to have anything to do with, so I hid in the woods so I could cry about it and your father found me there." She tilted her face up to his. "Thank you, my Beej, for finding me."
After a pause for a kiss, Beetlejuice cleared his throat and resumed the account. "So I said, if she wanted, I could be her friend. That we could have lots of fun together and I could show her all kinds of different places and she could meet other people who'd be glad to be friends with her. And then, I realized I'd have to tell her about the Neitherworld and about . . . me." He looked off into space for a moment. "I don't think I did a real good job with that."
Lydia shook her head. "You did just fine. What he told me," she addressed her children, "was that he came from a place that only he could arrange for me to get to and that he thought I'd find it . . . interesting. And fun." She grinned at Chazz and Beatie. "I certainly did!"
"Yeah, but . . ." Beetlejuice shrugged. "The part about me being, you know . . ."
"Well, you might have glossed over that part a bit. I mean you emphasized the ghost part, which I thought was so cool, but not the dead part, which might have been a little scary even for me. But you told me you knew all about not having friends because you were different and maybe that was a good reason for us to be friends together, because we were different." She pulled his arm closer around her. "And you were right."
"Papa said it was fate," Chazz said solemnly, examining the smokestack of his locomotive carefully.
Beetlejuice looked at him, puzzled. "I did?"
Chazz nodded. "A long time ago."
Lydia and Beetlejuice shared a look. They were becoming accustomed to pronouncements like these from their son.
Lydia said, "I read in a book once something like people are partners by fate, but friends by choice. I think that really fits us, don't you, Beej? I believe it was fate. We were meant to be together, and it didn't take me long to realize that." Lydia laughed slightly. "I think your Papa was a little slower than I was to see that, but I finally managed to convince him. We were best friends for years, the very best of friends, and it all started that day in the woods. You might not have known what to say, Beej, but you made me laugh. You turned on your Literal Translation Stuff and told the corniest jokes and made me smile and laugh and forget there were any other people in the world."
Beetlejuice shrugged. "I do get stuff right once in a while. Even when I don't know what I'm doing."
"So, Beatie," Lydia asked, "is that what you needed for your paper?"
"Oh, yeah!" Beatie was enthusiastic. "It's perfect. Mrs. Campion is going to be so impressed. Oh, I forgot to tell you. She also said to ask how Papa proposed to Mama. That's the essay I have to write next week."
Her parents looked at each other.
Lydia began, "Ah, well, it didn't exactly –"
"Nope, that's tomorrow night's story," interrupted Beetlejuice, "Now, you two want to watch a little TV?" and he held out a hand with a tiny television resting on the palm.
The two children laughed but both shook their heads. "I want to go start writing this essay," said Beatie, "before I forget any of it." She scrambled to her feet, notepad in hand, and started for the door. "Thanks, Mama, Papa. This is going to be the most fun homework ever." She headed for the stairs.
Chazz merely held up his locomotive and said, "Trains, Papa?"
Beetlejuice got up, took his son's empty hand, and glanced at his wife. Then he handed her the tiny television, flexed his right arm to display an almost undetectable bicep, and said, "We'll be training in the playroom," grinned at her and vanished.
"All alone again," sighed Lydia. "Some things never change." Then she laughed, set down the wee TV and sat smiling, remembering.