The List of Things That Will Not Change Read online

  “A 7 Up cake!” Lizette yelled. Because it turned out that 7 Up cake was one of her grandmother’s favorite cakes, too.

  “It’s super yummy,” she told me and Sonia. “Sometimes I help her, and my grandma always lets me eat the pieces that she trims off to make the cake look totally perfect before she frosts it. And sometimes I frost things, too. I’m not good enough to work on a wedding cake yet, but I can do cupcakes.”

  Angus had wandered over to sit on a bench next to Lizette’s brother, Damian. They were both hunched over Damian’s phone. I yelled “Angus!” and he looked up and waved. I had nothing to tell him. I just wanted him to see me right then.

  In my head, I put the day on my list of best days.

  * * *

  —

  On the bus, I felt bad that I could have a best day without Mom being in it for one minute. I watched Sonia looking out the window and realized that all of her time with us probably felt like that. Even if these weren’t best days for her, they were days with a piece missing, like my breakfast-table diagrams. Neither one told the whole story.

  Dad’s phone rang as we were getting off the bus, and he answered it right away, walking ahead of us down the block. I was used to it—when Dad isn’t at the restaurant, he gets a lot of calls about problems he’s supposed to solve over the phone. But when he came back, Dad told us it was Uncle Frank, and that something was wrong with my cousin Angelica.

  “What happened to her?” I asked.

  He said he didn’t know that anything had “happened.” But something was wrong with her face. The muscles on one side weren’t working right.

  “Does that…hurt?” I said.

  He didn’t think so. “But one side of her face is drooping, kind of. It’s upsetting.”

  “That’s awful.” Jesse shook his head. “What’s causing it?”

  “They don’t know for sure, but the doctor says it’s most likely something called Bell’s palsy.”

  “Which side of her face?” I asked.

  “What?”

  “Which side?”

  “I didn’t ask. Why?”

  I was thinking about how Angelica had fallen off the loft at the lake cabin that summer. Maybe when she hit the floor, something got broken after all.

  “Is there a medicine she can take for it?” I asked.

  “I don’t know, honey. They’ll have some answers in a few days. Maybe the whole thing will be over by then.” He looked at me. “Bea, you look upset. Don’t be. She’s going to be fine.”

  If she was going to be fine, why did Dad look worried?

  Jesse reached out and grabbed my hand. “You’re a good kid, Bea. A really good kid.”

  Which made me feel horrible. Really horrible.

  Because I knew I wasn’t good.

  Sonia stayed with us for six nights. We listened to all of Frog and Toad. We listened to Harriet the Spy. We listened to Charlotte’s Web. We listened to M.C. Higgins, the Great. We stayed up very late a couple of times, even though I had school in the morning. I never fell asleep before the end of a story while Sonia was there. Dad knew we were up way past my bedtime, but he never said anything, and neither did Jesse.

  Those tapes were helping. Sonia had even pushed her couch a little closer to my bed so that she could hear better. (When it got late, we turned the volume down.)

  On Sonia’s last night, she crouched over my tape collection, which I kept in a cardboard box in my closet.

  “What about Paddington?” she called from inside the closet. “I used to love Paddington.”

  “Not that one,” I said quickly, and she didn’t ask why.

  We listened to Frog and Toad again.

  Every night, I hoped that Sonia and I would talk in the dark. It was part of the story in my head about what sisters do. But Sonia never talked. After the last Frog and Toad story, I clicked the tape recorder off.

  “Are you tired?” I said into the dark.

  She didn’t answer.

  We were in our nightgowns, with our beds lined up and not too far apart. Rocco was curled up on the floor, and I could hear our dads talking in the other room. Did that add up to real sisters? I didn’t know.

  I fell asleep.

  * * *

  —

  In the morning, Jesse made waffles with butter and syrup. Sonia was happy, laughing at Dad’s dumbest jokes. Nobody noticed that I barely talked, or reminded me to get ready for school. I had to remind myself.

  When it was time for me to leave, they were all in the living room. Dad saw me in my coat and backpack, glanced at his watch, and jumped up. “Oops, almost time to go!”

  Sonia came over and said, “I’ll be gone when you get home.” And again, she sounded happy.

  “I won’t be here, either,” I told her. “I’m going to my mom’s.”

  “Oh, right.” Then she smiled.

  Maybe it was just because of how much I wanted us to be real sisters, but when Sonia smiled right then, I saw something. It was like her smile said, “We know each other.”

  * * *

  —

  My mom has a funny story about when I was really little. I loved finding the moon in the sky. (The moon has always looked nice to me. Not the “pretty” kind of nice. The moon looks nice like a person is nice.)

  My bedroom at Mom’s has two windows, side by side. She says when I was little, I would point through one window and say, “Moon!” And then I would run to the other window, point again, and say, “Utta moon!”

  Other moon. Because I thought that every window had its own moon.

  When I said, “I’ll be at my mom’s,” and Sonia smiled at me, I thought how my life with Mom and Dad was like a room with two big windows and two different moons. And now so was hers.

  I hugged her goodbye, me in my coat, Jesse’s radio playing, our sticky plates still on the table with Rocco underneath hoping it wasn’t too late for something delicious to fall on the floor. When we pulled apart, Sonia’s eyes were shiny. She wasn’t crying, but they looked wet, maybe. When I said, “I’ll miss you,” and she didn’t say anything back, I almost truly didn’t mind.

  Dear Sonia,

  How was the plane ride home? I hope no one made you eat a hot dog.

  Today is the January spelling party in my classroom. Now it’s just me, Carolyn Shattuck, and four other kids at our table in the lunchroom. My mom couldn’t find a special dessert for my lunch, but I had the idea to put some chocolate chips in a plastic bag, so we did that. The chips are kind of old, but okay.

  I think Rocco misses you. Sometimes he goes over to the orange couch and rests his head on it. He never used to do that before.

  I found one of your hair bands on the rug. It’s a green one. I put it in my jewelry box for when you come back.

  Your future sister,

  Bea

  Dear Sonia,

  Carolyn Shattuck is the worst. She keeps asking me “What’s on your neck?” even though I already told her it’s just eczema. I’m glad you don’t have it, but it would be nice to know one other person with eczema besides my uncle Frank.

  My mom packed me a new word-find puzzle book, and Carolyn keeps looking over my shoulder and pointing out words. It’s like she has no memory of stabbing me with that pencil in second grade.

  I handed in my colonial America research paper and Mr. Home wrote “Excellent” on it and drew one of his smiley faces. He has different ones. This one had a funny hat. Sometimes I can’t believe he’s the same person who thinks spelling parties are a great idea.

  I got your postcard (thanks!) and Jesse showed me the picture you emailed him, of you at the beach. I can’t even imagine wearing a bathing suit in February! But don’t worry, when you come back for the wedding it definitely won’t be cold here anymore. I promise.
>
  Your future sister,

  Bea

  Jesse was working behind the bar at Beatrice, setting things up for the dinner rush. Angus and I watched from our favorite bar stools, near the soda squirter. Angus had made us each a tall ginger ale, and now he was decorating them with fruit from the garnish tray.

  We’re only allowed to sit on the bar stools when the restaurant is closed, and we’re only allowed to use the soda squirter when Jesse is there and Dad is somewhere else.

  Sheila had picked us up from school and spent the whole subway ride worrying because Dad and Jesse didn’t have a wedding theme yet.

  “Can you believe we still don’t have a theme?” She flopped back against her seat.

  “Why’s it so important?” Angus said.

  “Because it’s fun. Every fun wedding has a theme!”

  “Like what?” I said.

  “My cousin Anne had a beach-theme wedding. It wasn’t at the beach, but they had sand everywhere, and people took off their shoes.”

  “Dad definitely wouldn’t want sand in the restaurant,” I said.

  “No sand? Then how about Paris? The cake could look like the Eiffel Tower! No? Your face is saying no to Paris.”

  I laughed. “Dad will never go for a theme.”

  She waved at me with one hand. “Okay, maybe something low-key. Come on, think.”

  Then Angus kept saying things like “Pie wedding!” and “Candy wedding!” until Sheila looked him right in the eye and said, “You have to stop. You’re blocking all of my good ideas.” But the truth was none of us could think of anything good.

  “It’ll happen,” she said after we’d been quiet for a while. “You can’t force genius.” She left us in front of the restaurant and clomped off in her boots.

  * * *

  —

  Jesse put six oysters in front of me, just the way I like them: drowning in lemon juice.

  “It wakes up your mouth!” I told Angus. But I knew Angus would never eat an oyster. “Oyster” was right after “scallop” on his nightmare list.

  He held up his hand like a stop sign and said, “Too rich for my blood.”

  That’s what Angus always says when he doesn’t want to try something. I think he got that saying from his mom but doesn’t realize it.

  Jesse was lining up clean glasses on the shelf under the bar, and we could only see the top of his head. “Actually,” he said, “oysters used to be considered low-class.”

  Angus reached for an olive. “How come?”

  “Because oysters were everywhere, and they were cheap. But then New York City started running out of oysters. And when there weren’t enough to go around anymore, rich folks got interested.” Jesse stood up and stretched, bouncing on the balls of his feet. “Now they’re downright fancy!”

  Sometimes I forget how tall Jesse is. I held up one hand, and he slapped me five, which made me feel tall, too.

  Angus shook his head. “Rich people.”

  “This used to be the oyster capital of the world,” Jesse said. “Did you know that some of the old streets and buildings downtown were partly built with crushed oyster shells? True story. But people polluted the water and diseases got into the oyster beds, so now even if you could find one around here, it wouldn’t be safe to eat it. But someday, maybe.”

  That’s why Jesse drags all the restaurant’s empty oyster shells to Brooklyn twice a week—people are trying to rebuild the New York oyster beds. He says putting a lot of old oyster shells in the water is a good way to make new oysters want to move in.

  “Oysters actually make the water cleaner just by living there,” Jesse told Angus. “They’re like little vacuum cleaners.”

  Angus made a face. “Now I’m never eating one.”

  “Did the colonists eat oysters?” I asked Jesse.

  “I’m guessing yes. Native people had been eating oysters for thousands of years before the colonists showed up. The colonists probably learned from them. It’s not as if there were a bunch of supermarkets around.”

  Angus looked at my oysters and said, “I would have waited for a supermarket.”

  Jesse looked at my oysters, too. He said, “Waiting makes me hungry.”

  * * *

  —

  Mr. Home got super excited when I asked him whether the colonists ate oysters. It turns out Jesse was right about them learning from Native people, and that if it weren’t for oysters, a lot of colonists might have starved during the winter of 1609. He said that oysters at the colonial breakfast would be “really terrific,” especially if we could bring them in for free.

  The final class 5-334 colonial-breakfast menu:

  Bread (from the store)

  Handmade butter (salt optional)

  Beef jerky (pretending it’s deer meat)

  Cider (because the colonists didn’t always have clean water to drink)

  No chairs (because they didn’t have enough for everyone, and we didn’t, either)

  Free oysters (Dad said later that he wasn’t sure exactly how this happened.)

  Mr. Home said table three had to get serious about our breakfast planning, now that it was March. Which meant more practice butter.

  I remembered my heavy cream this time, and we brought in our clean practice-butter jars, ready to be shaken. We screwed the lids on tight and shook. And shook. And shook.

  “My arm might fall off soon,” Lizette said.

  “I think my arm fell off already,” Angus said. “Which is why I can’t feel it anymore.”

  But I loved it. I wanted us to shake those jars together forever. When Mr. Home came over and told us we weren’t even close, I was happy.

  “How’s Sonia?” Lizette said.

  “Good,” I said. I felt like I should know more things about Sonia. She was almost my sister! “She went to the beach,” I said.

  “Really?” Lizette rolled her eyes. “Why don’t I live in California? Angus, what are you doing?”

  “High speed!” Angus was in overdrive, shaking his jar a hundred miles an hour.

  Lizette smiled. “Wanna race?”

  I was about to say I didn’t want to race, when there was a crash. Angus’s jar had slipped out of his hands and hit the floor.

  Carolyn Shattuck screamed, even though none of the mess went anywhere near her.

  Mr. Home told everyone to stay away from the broken glass. The school custodian came and cleaned up while Angus apologized a lot. He looked pretty upset. Angus almost never makes mistakes.

  “Share mine,” I said, and Angus and I took turns shaking my jar until he looked happier and our heavy cream became a solid. I used the back of a spoon to spread some on our bread. (It wasn’t French bread. It was what Dad calls plastic-bag bread.)

  “Let’s count,” Lizette said. “One…two…three!”

  We all took bites. It was pretty good. We had remembered salt.

  “I bet they don’t have bread and butter like this in California,” Angus said, chewing.

  Actually, Jesse says there’s a lot of amazing food in California. But I was glad we were all in New York.

  Dad thinks an e-invite is just as good as paper, but Jesse wanted a real invitation for every guest at their wedding. He ordered them at a stationery store, and they were delivered in a heavy square box. Inside, everything fit together like a puzzle: a stack of folded invitations, a lot of big envelopes, and these little square cards that Jesse said we would put inside the invitations, so that people could send them back to us, saying whether or not they could come. They were called RSVP cards, and there were even little envelopes for them.

  The invitation list had almost seventy people on it. (Dad said the garden at Beatrice could fit about seventy before everyone was officially squashed.) Mom and Sheila were first on the list, and Mom and Dad’s colle
ge friend Melissa (mostly Mom’s friend now), and Lizette and her grandmother, and Angus and (unfortunately) his parents, along with a lot of other Dad-and-Jesse friends and restaurant people. Jesse and Sheila’s parents died a long time ago, just like Dad’s. But our Minnesota family was coming and staying in a hotel. Dad had already made their reservation and confirmed that room service served hard-boiled eggs for Uncle Frank.

  Sheila bought a calligraphy pen and addressed all the envelopes herself. Then one night after dinner we scrubbed the kitchen table, dried it carefully, and made an assembly line. It was the four of us—Dad, Jesse, me, and Sheila—and we called Sonia on Skype so that she could be there, too. Jesse made a stack of books at one end of the table and balanced his laptop on it so that Sonia’s head was almost exactly as high as mine. Sonia was excited, and she even got some pieces of paper and pretended to stuff them into an envelope a few times, so it was like she was there helping us. It was pretty funny until she said, “Look, Daddy—this one’s for Uncle Mission,” and Jesse looked down and didn’t say anything.

  “Daddy!” Sonia said, still smiling. She thought he hadn’t heard her. Her head was there, but her body was in California. If she’d been in the room, she would have known right away that Jesse had heard her the first time.

  It was Sheila who talked finally. “Honey, you know Uncle Mission isn’t coming to the wedding, right?”

  “Why not?”

  Sheila looked at Jesse, who was still staring at the table.

  Sheila said, “Uncle Mission doesn’t want to be part of your dad’s life anymore.”

  Then Jesse talked. “Stop it, Sheel. He never said that.”

  I had never seen Sheila look furious before. “Jesse. He disappeared on you. How would you like me to say it?”

  Jesse looked…afraid. I think he was afraid because Sonia was hearing what Sheila said.

  “Maybe I should send him an invitation,” Sonia said. “He’ll come if I send it.”