25 September 2020 THE LIST OF THINGS THAT WILL NOT CHANGE by Rebecca Stead, Random House/Wendy Lamb, April, 2020, 224p., ISBN: 978-1-101-93809-6

“There will come a time when everybody 

Who is lonely will be free 

To sing and dance and love”

-- Frank Zappa (1968)

Ten-year-old Bea is a challenged speller. And she suffers from eczema. But her father is one heck of a chef.

Two years ago, when she was in third grade, Bea’s parents told her that her dad was gay and that they were ending their marriage. The list of things that will not change began with mutual reassurances from her parents that she’d always have both parents available to her, even though there would be two households instead of one. Throughout the story, her parents remain friends and Bea goes back and forth between the two nearby households. 

Now that she’s in fifth grade, Bea’s dad and his live-in partner, Jesse, are getting married. Bea has high hopes that Jesse’s daughter, Sonia, who is Bea’s age but lives across the country in California, will become like a real sister to her. This remains to be seen.

But Jesse’s sister Sheila is a grownup Bea can count on. It’s Sheila who eventually fills Bea in on some important family history:

“She said, ‘I’d have to start way back, a long time ago.’

Then she stopped, and I knew she was deciding how much to say. I waited.

‘Fifteen years ago, about a month before he was supposed to get married to Sonia’s mom, Jesse told us he was gay. He told all of us together at the kitchen table--me, our parents, and Mission. Jesse asked us for help.’

‘What kind of help?’

‘We all knew Elle--that’s Sonia’s mom--real well, because Jesse and Ellie were high-school sweethearts. In our town, high school sweethearts get married all the time. It’s not like New York City. Ellie felt like part of the family, and now Jesse was telling us he couldn’t marry her. It wasn’t fair, he said, to her or to him. But he needed to know we would still be there, after. He needed...I think he just needed us to say it. That we would still be there for him after he broke it off.’

‘What happened?’

Sheila closed her eyes. ‘You know what? I can still see us, sitting there. I’m looking at my mother’s kitchen right now.’

‘In your mind’s eye,’ I told her.

‘Exactly.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Our mother said, “Jess, this never happened. We never sat here tonight, and you never said those words. Do you understand?” And then she stood up from the table. After a second, our dad got up, and then Mission stood up, too. And all three of them walked out on him. I stayed up all night with Jesse. He cried, mostly. I did, too.’

‘But what did she mean? When she said it never happened? I don’t get it.’

‘It meant Jesse had to choose, Bea. He had to choose between himself and the people he loved.’

It hurt, hearing that. I was pretty sure nothing like this had ever happened to Dad.

‘So that’s why he didn’t call off the wedding? Or tell anyone else that he’s gay?’

Sheila said, ‘I told Jesse over and over--that I loved him, and that I would be there, no matter what. I told him that we could go talk to Ellie and her family together. But it wasn’t enough. I wasn’t enough.’

We heard Mom’s keys in the door. Sheila leaned over and squeezed my fingers. ‘Some people would probably think it’s wrong for me to be telling you this, Bea. But you might as well know right now that there are people who will try to make you choose between who you are and who they want you to be. You have to watch out for those people.’”

Another adult on whom Bea can rely is her therapist, Miriam. Miriam is a talented professional and a pivotal character in the unfolding of the plot. Thanks to Bea’s sessions with Miriam, readers learn how probing surficial emotions often reveals some deeper emotions.

THE LIST OF THINGS THAT WILL NOT CHANGE is a moving contemporary tale that sheds light on some of the ways in which more-recent generations have it better than we Boomers. Rebecca Stead, author of one of my all-time favs, WHEN YOU REACH ME, has again written an unforgettable story. 

And there’s nobody who’s better than Rebecca Stead at quietly crafting all those little details and then cuing up a jaw-dropping WOW! moment, where everything suddenly falls into place. 

Seriously, wow! I sure wish I had had this book--and lived in Bea’s world--a half-century ago.

Richie Partington, MLIS

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