Work Text:
July 15th, 1989
Jane’s been trying to adjust to a post-catastrophe world for the past…well, sometimes it’s hard to tell just how much time has passed. Joyce tacked a calendar on the wall of their new kitchen in their new home (which is has been a hellscape of an adjustment, too, but at least Jane has her own bedroom, even if she sometimes sneaks into Will’s bed and cuddles up with him), but time still seems to be fleeting and the pages keep turning faster than she can register the months passing and the seasons fading into another.
Will is leaving soon. He’s going to go far away, maybe, and leave Jane behind to keep Joyce and Hopper company, because Jonathan has already moved on, and now Will needs to move on, and Jane can’t leave her parents all alone in this house that was given to them in exchange for their silence. One kid has to stay, and it’s going to be Jane, even if she’s a little sore about it.
When she’s not spending her time stealing Will’s clothes out of his closet or prodding Hopper with existential questions that make him tilt his head at her and question his own sanity, Jane is watching reruns of family-friendly TV shows to keep her brain occupied. Sometimes the house is a little too quiet, because Hopper and Joyce are working and Will is often gone, and the laugh tracks make Jane feel like the house is always full, just like the silly sitcom called Full House.
It’s an odd little show. It’s not like The Cosby Show or Leave it to Beaver or even Roseanne. These people are different. There are three men—not all of them are dads, though—and three little girls and no mom (Jane thinks the mom’s death was briefly mentioned in one episode, but she can’t be sure because Hopper interrupted her TV time that day when he burned dinner to a flaming crisp and the smoke alarm was blaring and Joyce was yelling at him to PUT BAKING SODA ON IT, HOP!), which strikes Jane as strange, because all the shows she and Hopper used to watch back at the cabin almost always featured some kind of variation of mom-dad-kids.
She’s watching the episode where little Stephanie goes to kindergarten for the first time. Jane knows minimal about kindergarten, but she knows the word because she once heard Mike say that Holly got in trouble in kindergarten for coloring on another kid’s paper. Kindergarten is the school grade after preschool and before first grade, which she also knows because Will tried explaining the education system to her when he was reviewing his college options.
Kindergarten looks like fun. Jane is confused about why Stephanie is rejecting the idea so much. Yeah, the show is set in California (Jane understands this because she recognizes the Golden Gate Bridge in the intro) and Jane knows that little classroom is full of miniature mouth breathers like Angela was, but the kids look like they’re having a good time and, really, Stephanie is being a little annoying and kiddish about having to go, but Jane can relate to the fear of new environments—she felt similarly when Hopper set the Eggo trap for her and she fell right into it.
Jane watches, eyes glazed over, as every man that lives in the big house (even the ones who are not the dad, she notes, because it’s a plot point and Will has been trying to get her to recognize the plot when they watch TV) enters the classroom and claims to the teacher that they are Stephanie’s father. Stephanie just nods, saying, “Uh…okay!” and the teacher accepts it with an incredulous stare, but that’s only until there are just too many fathers in the room, and then Uncle Jesse tells the teacher, “What, Elizabeth Taylor’s daughter had seven fathers.”
Jane puts “seven fathers” in her mental Things to Ask Dad Later file. That file is overflowing, because sometimes recollection is hard and she gets distracted, but the idea burns a hole in her brain until the episode concludes with all three men exiting the classroom, baby in tow, as the audience applauses and cheers. Jane has learned that the clapping hallmarks the end of the episode and the TV will briefly cut to commercial before segueing into another episode. Sometimes it’s another episode of the same show, sometimes it’s a different show, and sometimes, when it’s late enough, the screen turns full of snow and hums loudly enough to hurt her ears. Usually that means she’s stayed up far too late past her TV time and Hopper will come out of his and Joyce’s bedroom to gently reprimand her and send her to her room.
This time, the screen cuts to the commercial with the Snuggle Bear. Jane smiles. It’s the same bear that’s printed on the bottle of fabric softener in the laundry room. When she pointed that out to Hopper, it prompted a whole conversation about advertisements and why companies use cute things to promote their products. Jane learned that Joyce likes the Snuggle Bear, too, and its cute little face might’ve influenced her to purchase it.
After the commercial is over, the Full House theme song starts to play, and Jane is mildly excited. She hasn’t seen all of the episodes yet, and even if she’s a little perplexed about how exactly this family works, it holds her attention long enough to distract her from the fact that Will is leaving soon.
—
Hopper doesn’t set dinner on fire this time, but there is a concerning amount of smoke billowing in the kitchen when Jane moseys into the otherwise empty kitchen. Joyce is out running a few errands before dinner, and Will is in his room deciding what’s going to leave home with him and what’s going to stay for Jane to have as something to remember him by when she’s all alone. Jane had offered to help, but Will told her it was okay. And maybe that’s for the best, because even the thought of Will packing up his life and leaving brings a sting to Jane’s eyes.
“Dad,” Jane says. She’s standing a safe distance from the stove, just in case things do go up in flames.
“Hey, kid,” Hopper says as he’s fanning the air with Joyce’s goose potholder. He throws a look over his shoulder, noting his daughter’s inquisitive stare. “You okay?”
“Seven fathers,” Jane immediately says, just in case the idea gets away from her. “How…how does someone have seven fathers?”
Hopper drops the potholder into a pot of boiling pasta. He plucks it out with careful fingers and wrings the goose’s neck once it’s cooled to a reasonable temperature.
“What’re you talking about?” he asks Jane. “What have you been watching on TV when me and Joyce aren’t home?”
“The show with the three dads that are not all dads,” Jane says. “Full House.”
“I don’t really watch that show,” Hopper says. Jane knows how much he despises it (too sappy and unrealistic, he once critiqued over her shoulder), so of course he doesn’t get it. “I thought there were three fathers.”
“No.” Jane shakes her head at her dad’s silliness. “One father, one uncle, and…I don’t know what Joey is. But maybe like an uncle?”
“Oh,” Hopper says, turning the heat down on the stove so the water might stop sloshing over the pot. “So how did you come up with seven fathers?”
“Uncle Jesse said it.”
“I need more context, kid.”
Context. Jane knows that word. Will has been teaching her all about context; that you can’t just say random things without context. People might take it wrong or get confused. And Hopper absolutely is confused.
“He said that Elizabeth Taylor’s daughter had seven fathers,” she says. “I don’t know who that is, but how could her daughter have seven fathers? I thought…to create a baby, it takes a mother and a father. Not seven fathers.”
Hopper nods, blowing out a soft breath. “That was a joke, Jane. Elizabeth Taylor—she’s an actress—has been married a lot of times. So, her daughter has a lot of stepfathers. Remember what a stepfather is? Stepparent?”
Jane thinks for a moment. “Stepparent is when your mom or dad marries someone new and they become your parent. Like you are to Will. Like Joyce is to me. Except I call Joyce Mom and Will calls you Hopper.”
Hopper winces. Jane tenses.
“Did you get burned?” Jane asks, prepared to fetch the communal bag of frozen peas out of the freezer.
“No. No, kid, I’m fine.” He clears his throat. “Just…that’s what he meant. He was making a joke.”
“How come I didn’t laugh?” Jane asks.
“You didn’t understand it,” he tells her. “Maybe the next time you watch that episode, it’ll be funny. You’ve got the context now.”
“Maybe,” she says, shrugging. Her eyes light up, suddenly curious. “I have another question.”
Hopper inwardly grumbles. “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” Jane eagerly says. “I don’t understand Full House. How come there is no mom like on the other shows? Roseanne is a mom. Clair Huxtable is a mom.”
“I think the mom died,” Hopper says, because maybe he has accidentally snoozed too long on the couch and woken up to kids shrieking and a baby cooing on the TV. “So the dad, uncle, and friend take care of the kids.”
“Do you think there is a real family like that somewhere?” Jane asks. “Dad, uncle, friend?”
Shrugging noncommittally, Hopper leans up against the fridge.
“Probably,” he says. “All families look different. A lot are nuclear—“
“Nuclear?” Jane parrots, clamming up. “Like a bomb?”
“No, kid,” Hopper quickly rectifies. “Nuclear family. A family that is made up of one father, one mother, and one or two children, though more children usually doesn’t change the definition. So long as there is one mother and one father.”
It’s a tough subject to crack, because Will won’t ever be nuclear by definition, and Hopper doesn’t want Jane to bring it up around him, but she seems to understand.
“So…we are nuclear?” Jane asks, pointing to her own chest and then at Hopper’s. “One father, one mother, two children. Plus Jonathan. But he’s gone now.”
Hopper nods. “You can say that.” He’s not going to bring up the fact they neither Jane or Will are biologically his. He’s not going to complicate it for Jane when she’s already trying her best, and quite frankly, he might burst into tears like a child.
“And the Tanner family is not nuclear,” Jane surmises. “Because no mother. One father, one uncle, one friend.”
“Right,” Hopper says.
“But they call themselves a family sometimes.”
“Yeah,” he agrees, taking her word for it. “Family has a lot of meanings. Not all families are nuclear. Not all families look like us or like the Huxtables. Sometimes family is the people you meet in life. People that you love and care about.”
“Like me and you,” Jane says. “We are family, because I love and care about you, and you love and care about me. And Joyce loves me and cares about me. So she’s my family, too, even though I didn’t come out of her stomach. And that means Will and Jonathan are family, too. And Max! Because she cares about me and I care about her.”
Hopper’s chest tightens but love still blooms inside of him at the sight of his daughter gazing up at him. She’s excited now, practically vibrating on the spot.
“Also, the whole Party!” Jane exclaims. “They can all be my family, too. Right?”
“They can be whatever you want,” Hopper says. “You can call them family if you want.”
“Family,” Jane says, completely wistful. “I like that.”
“I do, too, kid,” Hopper says as he messes up her hair. “Glad you learned something from trash television.”
“It’s not trash.” Jane frowns. She leans to the side and points to the stove. “The food is on fire again, Dad.”
The smoke alarm blares right then, and Jane watches innocently as her dad flails around the kitchen. Joyce enters the kitchen with paper bags in her arms and watches, amused, as her husband douses the pot in baking soda. Will has come out of his room now, probably thinking the house is burning down, and hugs Jane under his arm while Hopper is putting out the grease fire.
Joyce leans into Jane’s ear. “Go find some shoes. We’re going out for a decent family dinner that’s not been burned to hell by your dad.”
—
A week later, Hopper comes home from work and hangs his hat on the hook. Jane is couch surfing again, sprawled out in one of Will’s flannels and a pair of shorts that almost look like Joyce’s and socks that definitely belong to Hopper. She’s happy, smiling at the screen, and when she notices that her dad is home, she springs up like a coil.
“Dad!” she exclaims, dragging him over to the living room and practically tossing him into his recliner. “I’ve been watching this cool show!”
“Full House again,” Hopper mutters as he pulls a cigarette from his pocket.
“It’s not Full House,” Jane says as she perches herself on the arm of the recliner. “Watch.”
And he watches, reluctantly, as a little girl in a very bright, mismatched outfit and cute little pigtails tells another little girl—one who is more poised and dressed like a little Nancy Wheeler might have ten or so years ago—that some man named Henry had to go to court and fight to get her and all the other girl’s father had to do was kiss her mother and wait around for nine months.
Well, now he’s interested, and he gets comfortable with Jane curled up beside him, and eventually he picks up on the context that the pigtailed girl—Punky—is a foster child who is being taken care of by a man named Henry, and she calls him her dad, which doesn’t always go over so well with the world around her. She’s being taunted by the poised little girl, named Margaux, who tells her that Henry won’t show up for a school function because he’s just a foster father.
“What a little shit,” Hopper mutters, lighting up his cigarette.
“She’s really mean,” Jane says. She’s painfully reminded of Angela, but then she’s again distracted by the TV. “Henry is a nice man. Do you think he will show up?”
Hopper understands the predictability of television sitcoms, because they’re meant to provide comfort and not sadness, so he does think that Henry will show up, but he only shrugs at Jane. Watching her surprised face when the obvious eventually comes to fruition is one of his favorite things about her.
At the end of the episode, Henry shows up for Punky and proves little shit Margaux wrong, and the screen fades out on Punky’s smug face as the audience claps. When Hopper looks over at Jane, she’s beaming.
“That’s her dad,” she tells Hopper. “Because he cares about her. He showed up.”
“Yeah,” Hopper agrees, blowing smoke in the opposite direction of Jane’s face.
“Just like you’re my dad,” she continues. “You fought to get me and keep me. All most people’s dads do is kiss their mom and wait around for nine months.”
Hopper snorts and hugs her into his side as he stubs out his cigarette in the nearby misshapen ashtray that Jane made for him in ceramic class. “Yeah, Jane. They do.”