The List of Things That Will Not Change

Mom and Dad told me about the divorce at a “family meeting.” I had just turned eight. We’d never had a family meeting be fore. I sat on the couch, between them. They didn’t look happy, and I suddenly got worried that something was wrong with our cat, Red. That they were going to tell me he was dying. A boy in my class that year had a cat who died. But that wasn’t it.
Dad put his arm around me and said that some big things were going to change. Mom squeezed my hand. Then Dad said they were getting divorced. Soon he was going to move out of our apartment, into a different one.
I said, “But I’m staying here, right?” I looked at Mom.
Dad said I was going to have two homes, and two rooms, instead of one. I was going to live in both places.
I could think of only one person in my class whose parents were divorced: Carolyn Shattuck. Carolyn had a navy-blue sweatshirt with one big pocket in front. Until the family meeting, I had wanted one just like it.
I said, “What about Red?”
Mom said Red would be staying with her. “With us- you and me.”
You and me. That made me feel awful. Because back then I couldn’t think of Mom and me without Dad.
Dad said, “Things are changing, Bea. But there’s still a lot you can count on. Okay? Things that won’t ever change.”
This was when they gave me the green spiral notebook and the green pen. (My favorite color is green.) In the notebook, they had made a list. The list was called Things That Will Not Change.
I started reading:
1. Mom loves you more than anything, always.
2. Dad loves you more than anything, always.
I skipped to the end, uncapped the green pen, and wrote:
7. Red will stay with me and Mom.
I said, “I want my rainbow to stay here, too. Over my bed.” Dad painted that rainbow, right on the wall, when I was really little.
Mom said, “Yes, of course, sweetie. Your rainbow will stay right where it is.”
I wrote that down, too. Number 8.
Dad moved into a different apartment a month later.
I go back and forth between them.
In the beginning, it was hard for me to sleep at Dad’s new apartment. I had only lived in one place before. Now it was: Different room. Different bed. Different sounds. No Mom.
Dad bought plants for every window and painted a new rainbow on the wall above my new bed. He bought my little orange couch (for sleepovers), and my puffy purple chair, and my red rug. He bought me new sheets, a new comforter, and two new pillows. He read to me every night.
But at Dad’s, I woke up a lot. Sometimes it was my eczema itching. Eczema feels worse at night. But sometimes it wasn’t the eczema, and I didn’t know what it was. I’d get up and stand in the hall outside Dad’s bedroom, holding my pillows and listening to him snore. I liked his snoring. After a while, I’d go in, find the rolled-up sleeping bag under Dad’s bed, and spread it out on the floor. I liked the shadows on the ceiling of Dad’s room. As soon as I saw those shadows, I felt all right.
That happened a lot of nights. He always left that sleeping bag under his bed so I’d know where to find it. Those first months at Dad’s, it was like I had to build a hundred bridges, from me to every new piece of furniture, every new lamp, every new fork, even the bathroom faucets and the lock on the door, until, slowly, all of Dad’s new things stopped feeling wrong.
Jesse moved in with us two years later, at the beginning of fifth grade, right before Dad told me about them getting married. The things Jesse brought never felt wrong. They felt like presents.
Jesse brought three old movie posters, a radio, his big blue coffee mug, and an old-fashioned telephone–the kind you dial by sticking your finger in a hole and dragging it. And he also brought his big sister, Sheila, who had already been my baby sitter for two years. Sheila didn’t actually live with us, but once Jesse moved in, she came over a lot. (She still does.) Jesse likes to say that Sheila is a true Southern lady, and every time he does, she winks at me. They grew up in Arkansas, so I guess that means they’re both Southern.
Jesse wakes up early. He usually has the radio on when I walk into the kitchen. By the time Dad wakes up, Jesse and I are already eating our double-toast. That’s what Jesse calls toast that’s buttered on both sides.
Jesse knows it’s critical to bring a dessert with your school lunch, even if it’s just one little cookie wrapped in a napkin. And he agrees with Mom about not having other people clean up your mess. After he moved in, Sheila stopped cleaning Dad’s apartment, and Jesse made us a job wheel for chores, just like the one my all-time favorite teacher, Ms. Adams, had on the wall in second grade. Jesse made one job be “lick floor under table,” and that job is always Rocco’s.
He loves walking Rocco. Rocco made at least four new dog-park friends the first month Jesse lived with us. I can’t even imagine a person (or a dog) who wouldn’t want Jesse around.
I’m too old for a babysitter now, but Sheila is still at our place all the time. She says she comes over just to sit on our couch and look at Jesse’s happiness. He was a happy kid, she says. But he was a worrier.
I’m a worrier, too. So that makes me love Jesse even more.