January 1993
Dan was honest with Roseanne about only intending to scare Fisher. His plan really had been to go over there and politely knock on the door, to push his way in before he could be denied entry. Then, he figured all it would take would be some macho posturing. Dan would pull himself up to his full height and stare down at the kid. He'd threaten you EVER raise a hand to her again and you won't have a hand to raise. He'd scare the shit out of the kid without even having to touch him.
That was the plan, at least.
Only Fisher wasn't so easily cowed. In fact, Fisher hadn't seemed surprised when Dan showed up at his door, even invited him in and offered him a beer. He nonchalantly shared that he hadn't meant to hurt Jackie, not really. It was just that he was stressed and she was on him about finding work and he just needed her to leave him alone to think. But women, they nag and sometimes you just have to remind them of their place, right Dan?
Things got sort of fuzzy for Dan after that. He remembers seeing red and landing a satisfying punch to the Fisher's jaw that finally wiped the smug expression off the younger man's face. He remembers the screaming and the neighbors calling the police. Mostly though, he remembers listening to Fisher talk so calmly about smacking Jackie around, his tone as apathetic as though he were discussing the weather.
And now, admiring his still badly bruised knuckles, he thinks about ambling into his kitchen and watching Roseanne cradling a sobbing Jackie close, as if she might break into pieces without the extra support. He thinks about the twenty year old memories that came rushing back at the sight. He thinks about Jackie sitting in the tiny kitchen of his and Roseanne's first apartment with the beginnings of an impressive black eye, just a teenager and scared of her own shadow. He realizes that if he's being honest with himself, he'd given Fisher the beating that he'd been itching to give to Al Harris for twenty years.
March 1973
Roseanne throws their apartment door open with a flourish and walks in, her arms spread wide open.
"Ah, home sweet home!"
She collapses into the nearest armchair and watches as Dan comes in behind her, struggling with their bags. He drags them over the threshold and then gives up, dumping them onto the floor and heading for the couch.
"So nice of you to help with the suitcases," he says dryly as he reaches for the remote and turns the TV on.
"Don't mention it," she replies with a grin. She stands and carefully steps over their bags, then pulls the door open again. "Well, I'll be back later."
"Where are you going?" Dan asks incredulously. "We just got back from the honeymoon three minutes ago!"
Roseanne sighs as if it should be obvious.
"I'm goin' to see Jackie!"
Dan rolls his eyes. "You two are joined at the hip."
"Are not!" Roseanne protests uselessly.
He gives her a look and she shrugs a shoulder. "Alright fine, we are. But we've never been apart this long and I miss her. Happy?"
"Thrilled," he deadpans.
"Oh, shut up. I'll be back later."
"Without her, please!"
He laughs when she cheerfully flips him the finger before closing the front door.
Barely an hour after she'd left, Dan hears Roseanne approach their small apartment, and he can tell by the way the door slams that she's angry. He stops unpacking their bags long enough to listen to her stomp through the living room and into the kitchen. There's a long drawn out squeak as one of the dining table chairs is dragged across the linoleum floor.
"Here, sit. I'm gonna get you something to put on that."
Her voice is softer than what he's used to hearing, almost motherly in its concern, and he quietly closes the bedroom door and shuffles close to the kitchen to see what's going on.
"It's not his fault," Jackie is saying tearfully while Roseanne bustles around the kitchen, "I should have just shut up."
His wife stops in front of her sister and fixes her with a look of disbelief.
"That's crap and you know it, Sis. When are you gonna stop defending him?"
Clearly not expecting an answer, Roseanne finishes filling a Ziploc baggie full of ice and wraps it in a dishtowel. She motions for Jackie to tilt her head back against the chair, then hands her the cold compress to put against her eye. It's swollen and purple, and Jackie winces in pain as she gingerly does as she's told.
"Hey kid," Dan says quietly, walking into the kitchen and addressing Jackie, "did some guy hit you?"
Jackie turns five shades of red and looks to Roseanne for guidance.
Roseanne sighs. "No, Dan. Not just some guy. Dad. Dad hit her."
Dan blinks, dumbfounded. It wasn't that he didn't know that some men like to knock their families around; he just didn't know that his wife's father was one of them. Or that she could be so casual about it. "Oh."
Jackie sits stiff and silent in the kitchen chair, all big eyes and pale skin. She looks much younger than her seventeen years, and the continuing silence tells Dan all he needs to know.
He clears his throat. "It's not the first time, is it?'
Jackie nibbles at her bottom lip nervously. Roseanne merely shrugs a shoulder and says, "Welcome to our childhood, honey."
Roseanne appears in their bedroom an hour later looking exhausted.
"How is she?"
She looks up, her face unreadable.
"She'll be okay."
He watches as Roseanne silently moves around the room, shedding her clothes and pulling on a nightgown before throwing back the covers on her side of the bed and climbing in.
"Dan, I can't make her go back there."
She's staring at him determinedly, and he opens his mouth to reply, but before he can get in a word, she starts again.
"At least when I was there, it was both of us gettin' it, you know? We could distract him and protect each other. Now it's only her and it's not like Mom gives a damn. She's got nobody to watch out for her. She's my little sister, Dan."
She's still looking at him as though she's expecting an argument, and he waits a moment to make sure she's actually finished speaking before he nods in agreement. "Ok."
Roseanne looks relieved. "Ok."
They turn out the light and go to bed without another word, but she finds his hand in the darkness and squeezes. Dan squeezes back.
Jackie freezes up like a deer in headlights when he speaks to her the next morning over breakfast and Roseanne's reaction is matter-of-fact when he brings it up later.
"She's always like that for a day or two after," his wife says, "it'll pass."
Dan finds her blasé reaction more than a little horrifying and protests. "Rosie, someone has to do something. Press charges. He can't just get away with this. I want to kill him."
"Well okay, honey," she replies, exasperated. "You go beat up my dad and land yourself in jail. That'll make it all better."
"I gotta do something!"
"Dan, I'm safe. Jackie's safe. You're helping me get her out of there. You've done enough. "
Bev isn't pleased when Jackie stays with Roseanne and Dan for two more nights, just long enough for Al to head out of town again. On the third morning, Roseanne stands in the kitchen and holds the phone receiver away from her ear while her mother interrogates her.
"I don't understand why she just won't come home. What are the three of you doing over there, having a big slumber party? Is she at least going to school?"
Dan snatches the phone out of his wife's hand as Jackie appears in the kitchen.
"Hi Bev!"
"Oh!" She sounds surprised, but to her credit, quickly recovers. "Hello, Dan. Roseanne is being ridiculous, insisting that her sister live with you! I've never heard of such a thing."
Dan jumps in when she takes a breath.
"We're going to keep Jackie here for a while, Bev. We don't want her going and getting herself another shiner, do we? People might start wondering where they're comin' from."
The threat is just thinly veiled enough to get away with. Bev is only silent for a moment before crisply declaring. "Well, then. I suppose I can't change your mind. Goodbye, Dan."
She hangs up before he can say anything else, so he shrugs and hangs the phone receiver back up on the wall. Roseanne is triumphantly pounding her approval into his other arm, and Jackie looks as though she might cry out of gratitude.
Jackie proves to be a perfect house guest, volunteering to spend the time she's not at school helping with the cooking and cleaning and other household chores. She's quiet as a mouse and unfailingly polite, seemingly making an effort to be as unobtrusive as possible. Dan realizes after a few weeks that he's never seen her completely relax when he's around, and it all starts to drive him a little crazy.
He finally brings it up one night before he and Roseanne drift off to sleep.
"Rosie," he asks, staring out into the darkness of their bedroom, "is your sister always this…" he searches for a word, "….pleasant?"
He hears a loud snort from the other side of the bed. "I wish. She acts like her regular old pain-in-the-ass self around me. Then you come home from work and she transforms into Little Miss Perfect."
His suspicions confirmed, Dan's not quite sure what to say. Luckily for him, Roseanne turns toward him and beats him to the punch.
"She's afraid of getting in the way, Dan. She's used to trying not to piss Dad off. The less we got noticed, the less we got hit."
He suddenly feels a little insulted. "Well, I'm not going to hit her."
There's silence again before his wife says quietly, "She knows that. It was just different for her, that's all. I mouthed off and ran off with you. Sis, she always tried to be better so it wouldn't happen again. Just give her time."
He makes it his new project to loosen her up. He tests her every so often in different ways, playfully pushing a little more each time, just to see if he can get a reaction out of her. His favorite is to wait until she's watching TV and sets the remote control on the arm of the couch. He then walks into the living room and deliberately scoops it up and changes the channel. It takes a few tries, but she eventually scowls and pounces on him, determined to finish her show.
Dan waits until she sits back down on the couch; her right leg pulled up so that her foot rests on her other knee, then sits next to her. He reaches his arms out into a fake stretch, and then shoves her foot off of her knee. She shoots him a look and moves further away, crossing her legs at the ankle instead. He moves closer and elbows her in the arm.
On this particular occasion, he riles her up so much that she kicks her leg weakly at him. He laughs, it escalates, and when Roseanne walks into the room they're in the middle of a childish slap fight.
"Hey, hey, hey!" she yells at them, clearly amused. "What's going on here? Do I have to separate you two?"
"She started it!" Dan shouts, pointing at Jackie with both hands and fighting hard to keep a straight face as he watches her eyes go wide.
"I did not!"
Jackie turns to her sister, her expression the very picture of righteous indignation.
"Roseanne, he keeps bothering me on purpose!"
She folds her arms and eyes him warily from across the couch. "You big jerk."
Roseanne gets stuck working a double shift one night a few weeks later, leaving Dan and Jackie on their own for dinner. After relaying the message, Dan barely has time to hang up the phone before Jackie hops up from the armchair she'd been sitting in, idly flipping through a magazine.
"I can make something," she offers.
"Or," Dan replies, "we can order pizza. What do you like?"
"Anchovies and pineapple," she answers automatically, watching his expression carefully.
It takes him until she breaks into a small smile to realize she's joking, and he laughs.
"Pepperoni it is! Excellent choice."
Half an hour later, they're sitting at the kitchen table full and content, and Jackie pulls the pizza box toward her and lifts the remaining pieces out. She gets up and busies herself with putting the pizza slices on a plate and sliding them into the oven.
"For Roseanne," she explains needlessly.
Dan nods and Jackie fiddles with the dishtowel hanging from the arm of the oven door.
"Did she tell you Mom called again yesterday?"
She looks up long enough to see him shake his head and then turns her attention back to the dishtowel she's worrying between her fingers.
"She says I ought to move back home and let you and Sis get on with being newlyweds. Or at least find somewhere else to go now that I'm eighteen and all. She thinks this has gone on long enough."
Dan takes that to mean that Al is frustrated that both his punching bags left home at the same time. He feels a flash of anger toward Bev for trying to manipulate Jackie into subjecting herself to that treatment all over again. When she chances another glance at him, he's careful to keep his expression as neutral as possible.
"There's no rush," he tells her warmly. You've got a home here for as long as you need it, kid."
She smiles, her relief unmistakable.
"Thank you."
Once she graduates, Jackie gets a full-time job working with Roseanne down at Wellman, and after a few months, Dan comes home from work one evening to find the sisters sitting side-by-side at the kitchen table waiting for him. They're wearing matching grins, and Dan pauses to run down his mental list of important dates to make sure he hasn't forgotten anything. As far as he knows, it's not his anniversary or anyone's birthday. There are no major holidays going on that he's aware of, and so he feels safe asking, "What's with you two?"
Jackie holds up a closed fist and dramatically opens her fingers all at once to reveal a set of keys dangling from a keyring she has looped around her index finger.
"I found an apartment, I'm movin' out!"
Dan grabs at his chest and gasps. "Oh darlin', don't tease."
She makes a face at him and Roseanne grins.
"Joke's on your honey, guess who gets to carry all the heavy stuff?"
Dan closes the hood of Jackie's car as she walks toward him from the front door of her apartment building.
"You're all set, little sister!"
"I still wish you'd let me pay you, Dan."
He wipes his dirty hands on the rag he brought along and then accepts the cold can of soda that Jackie holds out to him.
"It's a five minute job," he replies, opening the soda and holding it up as if to begin a toast, "and this is payment enough."
She crosses her arms and leans a hip against the driver's side door. "Dan," she says, "I want to thank you for everything you've done for me."
Dan laughs a little uncomfortably. "Are we still talking about the oil change?"
She scrunches her nose at him. "Come on, Dan, I'm serious. You just got married to my sister and you let me move into your really small apartment and wouldn't let me help pay for nothin' so I could save up money for my own place, and then you helped me get a car. Not a lot of guys would do that. They woulda told Roseanne that I wasn't their problem."
Dan sighs and runs a hand over his face. He leans over the car, his palms flat on the hood so he's at the right height to look her in the eye.
"Jack, I wasn't gonna leave you in that house to keep gettin' beat on."
Her face flushes and she looks down, suddenly becoming very interested in her hands before looking back up at him shyly through her eyelashes.
"I know it," she says, almost too quiet to hear. "I just don't know how I'm ever gonna repay you."
He straightens up and makes a big show of considering it, stroking his nonexistent beard and making a humming noise.
"How about free babysitting services whenever we want when our first kid comes along?"
She laughs. "Deal."
"And once you're old enough, you buy the damn beer for a change."
Jackie nods, still smiling. "You betcha."
January 1993
It's twenty years later and Jackie's staying with them for much the same reason she did when she was just a kid. When she's not at the diner, she's sitting in front of the TV in a pair of plain gray sweats with the remote in her hand, mindlessly flipping through the channels. On one particular occasion, it's late and the TV is just loud enough to hear in the bedroom. Roseanne is fast asleep, unbothered by the noise, but after a few minutes he can't take it any longer and pads out into the living room to ask Jackie to turn it down. He gets as far as the doorway and leans against it, watching. She must feel him hovering, because she turns toward him, an unreadable expression on her face.
"You don't have to tiptoe around me, Dan. I'm fine."
He takes that statement at face value and continues into the room, then drops onto the couch next to her. "Good," he tells her, snatching the remote out of her hand, "because you have terrible taste in TV. There's got to be something good on."
He smiles to himself when he hears her laugh, and they both relax, absorbed in a series of infomercials selling ridiculous products that nobody has ever needed. Before long, Jackie stops reacting to the exaggerated problem and solution shtick and he glances over to find her curled into a ball, fast asleep. Dan turns down the volume to just over a rumble and rises to his feet slowly, careful not to disturb her. He reaches for the afghan on the back of the couch and gently covers her with it, then places the remote control on the coffee table within easy reach in case she wakes up. Before heading off to bed, Dan rests a protective hand lightly on top of her head for just a moment, the same way he's done with all of his kids at one point or another.
"Sweet dreams, little sister."