Chapter 10: Box #10

Hello Mama and Dad, I had to call collect
'Cause I ain't got a cent to my name
Well I'm sleepin' in the hotel doorway
And tonight they say it's gonna rain
And if you'd only send me some money
I'll be back on my feet again

El celebrates her birthday for the first time, and knows exactly what she wants.

The date on El's birth certificate wasn't her real birthday. It would be safer, Owens had said, to make it completely different, just in case anyone started to suspect. It hadn't made a difference to El; she'd never celebrated a birthday in her life, real or otherwise.

Still, Hopper wanted to make the day special for her, even if it was completely arbitrary. That she hadn't ever gotten a birthday party hardly registered on the long list of abuses she'd suffered in the lab, but for some reason, it was the little details like that that made Hopper's heart ache for her. So one evening in late May, a week before the date that Owens had picked for her birthday, Hopper asked her after dinner what she wanted to do.

"For my birthday?" said El, eyes wide.

"Yeah, your birthday. It's next week, on the third, remember? So is there anything special you wanna do?"

She was looking at him in awe. "I can do…anything?"

"Sure, anything. Well," he added, realizing that wasn't actually quite true, "we still have to be safe about it. You can't just be running around Hawkins. But you could have a party here with your friends, or I could take you out somewhere farther away, where no one knows us."

She thought about it, looking like it was the most serious decision she'd ever made. Then she said, in a small voice, "Can I visit Mama?"

That wasn't what Hopper had expected. They'd gone to see Terry and Becky a handful of times, but the visits weren't ever happy, exactly. El would talk to her aunt for a few minutes and then spend most of the time sitting next to her mother, holding her hand and murmuring to her quietly, while Hopper and Becky sat in the kitchen. Hopper didn't know what El talked about, but she was always quiet and sad on the way home and more withdrawn than usual for the next few days. He wasn't sure these visits were healthy for her, really. But who was he to deny her the chance to see her mother on her birthday?

"Sure, kid," he said. "I'll call your Aunt Becky to make sure she's around on your birthday and we can go out there for a few hours, how's that sound?"

El nodded, not looking happy so much as satisfied.

"Also," Hopper continued, "what do you want for your birthday?"

"Something else?" El asked tentatively.

"Yeah, a present. Like we did on Christmas, remember? People do that for birthdays, too. So is there anything you've been dying to have?"

"Anything?" she asked again.

"Well, within reason," he said, though he already knew he was going to spend the next few years spoiling the kid rotten.

She seemed to be carefully considering it. After awhile, she opened her mouth as if to say something, but then closed it again, looking troubled. "I don't know," she said eventually.

Hopper smiled to put her at ease. He supposed it was a bit overwhelming for her, being told she could do anything and have anything that she wanted. "That's okay, kid," he said. "We'll think of something."

—

She had been excited all morning the day of her birthday, bouncing with energy and as talkative as she ever was, but on the drive to the Ives' house El grew quiet. Hopper opened his mouth to speak a few times, but each time he stopped himself. She was gazing out the window at the passing country, looking pensive and a little sad, and he couldn't think of anything to say that felt right. He still hadn't really figured out how to talk to her about her mother. He wasn't sure she even wanted to talk.

Becky greeted them at the door and pulled El into a hug, just as she always did. "Happy birthday, sweetie," she said with a smile, pulling back to hold El at arm's length and look her up and down. "Feel any older?"

El shrugged. Hopper didn't bother to point out that, technically, she'd been fourteen for a few months already.

Selfishly, he hoped this visit would be brief. The first couple times had been okay; there had been a lot to fill Becky in on while El talked to her mother. The last time, though, they'd run out of things to say on the subject of El's childhood and the lab, and quickly discovered that they had little else in common. Now they just sat in the kitchen smoking in silence, both pretending that they weren't straining to distinguish El's words from the other room.

After a little over an hour, El wandered back into the kitchen, looking just as forlorn as she always did at the end of these visits. "Ready to go?" Hopper asked, and she nodded.

She stayed quiet all through Becky's affectionate farewell, too, managing only a soft monosyllabic goodbye as they went out the door. For the first time that day, Hopper became a little bit worried. He expected El to be a little off, just as she always was when they came out here, but usually she exchanged at least a few minutes of conversation with her aunt. Today, though, she hardly seemed willing to open her mouth.

He drove for a few minutes in silence before asking her about it. "Something on your mind, kid? You're awfully quiet." When she didn't answer, he added, "You know you can talk to me. Whatever it is."

In his peripheral vision he saw El turn toward him, and when he glanced over at her she seemed to be struggling with what to say. He didn't press her, just let her work it out on her own. Finally, she said, "I don't have parents."

Hopper frowned. "Of course you do. We just visited your mom, didn't we?"

"No, I—she's not like a mama, really. I mean—" Hopper could hear the guilt in her voice for saying that about Terry, and the pain. "She is my mama, and I love her, but she can't…" She trailed off, but Hopper understood. "And Papa wasn't really my papa."

"No," he said darkly, "he wasn't." But then he glanced away from the road again and was startled to see tears in her eyes. "Hey," he said more gently, taking a hand off the wheel to clasp her shoulder, "hey, what's this about, huh?"

"I…" She looked away from him, out the window, and he could see her biting in her lip in the reflection. "I want parents," she said, so quietly that Hopper could barely hear her.

She sounded so small and so sad that it broke Hopper's heart. He pulled over to the side of the road, deciding that this was a conversation for which he should be able to make real eye contact with her. Once he stopped the car, though, he had no idea what to say. Eventually, he said hesitantly, knowing that it could never be enough, "You have me." And if he was being honest with himself, it hurt a little to hear that she didn't consider him a parent. More than a little. Even aside from the fact that, on paper, he was her biological father, he'd thought she had come to see him at least as a sort of father figure. But maybe he'd been wrong about that.

El took a deep, shaky breath and turned back to him. She opened her mouth, closed it again, swallowed hard. "I know," she said. "But…"

He cut her off before she could finish. If she didn't see him as a parent, he could live with that, but he didn't think he could handle her saying it to him. So he preempted it himself. "I know I'm not…good at this," he said. "I'm sorry, kid. I wish I could be like a real parent to you. And if you want…" He took a deep breath. She'd seemed happy when he showed her the birth certificate, so happy she'd asked to keep it displayed on the wall, and that had put to rest his fear that she'd rather live with someone else. But now, with this conversation, he was beginning to wonder if maybe he hadn't horribly misread the situation. Was this why she'd been so quiet today, and wanted to see her real mother? Was she trying to figure out a way to tell him that she wanted to go somewhere else, somewhere away from him? "If this, if being with me, if you want something other than that…"

But El was shaking her head. "No," she said firmly, and Hopper felt such a rush of relief that he had to force himself to keep listening to her next words. "I meant…" She took another deep breath and he could see her steeling herself, looking determined. Then she said, "I know what I want for my birthday."

He blinked at her, confused by the sudden change in subject. He'd already gotten her a birthday present, of course. That morning, she'd unwrapped a few new books and a stack of paper and a box of colored pencils. "What?"

"Can you be Dad?" she said in a rush.

There was something funny happening to his chest, like his lungs were contracting even as his heart swelled almost painfully. "What?" he said again, his voice strangled.

El repeated herself more slowly. "Can you…be Dad?"

And he'd already adopted her, was already her father on paper, so he knew there was only one thing she could possibly mean. "You want to call me Dad?" he whispered.

She nodded, looking both hopeful and terrified.

"I…" He blinked back the tears that had suddenly sprung to his eyes and tried to speak around the lump in his throat. "Of course you can, kid. Of course."

El's face broke into a watery grin. "Dad," she said, testing the word.

It shouldn't have made a difference, Hopper thought, whether she called him Hopper or Hop or Dad, as long as she was with him. He'd thought of her as a daughter for so long that this should have just felt like a formality more than anything else. But it did make a difference. He reached for her, turning awkwardly in his seat to pull her into a hug. It made such a huge difference that he felt lightheaded with it. He was a dad again, for real, in every sense.

"Dad," she said again, face pressed into his shoulder. "Dad."

He was crying into her hair and he knew she could probably tell, but he didn't care in the slightest. He held for a long time before lowering his head to kiss her cheek and then pulling away. He wiped at the moisture on his face with a watery little laugh, and out of the corner of his eye, he saw El do the same.

It was El's birthday, not his. But he felt like he was the one who had been given the greatest gift imaginable.