Foregone conclusions. Fait accompli. Perhaps the only one, or at least the first one, is the knowledge that they exist. And that each of us has a different time, place or way of learning about them—except, of course, the ones who come to comprehend them at the moment of their death.
Me, I learned about inevitability, about marching with fate, one cool, damp, overcast Sunday afternnon. In those days, I always knew what day of the week it was because I was expected to. That’s how it seemed, anyway: someone decided I had to be in a certain place at a certain moment. Or I knew by way of other people that it was Sunday because they were going to and coming from church. And the store down the block was closed.
People walk differently when they’re drawn by the impossibility of taking a different step from the ones they’re taking. They don’t walk like people who are doing what they “have to do,” such as when they’re going to work or the dentist. On Sunday afternoons, at least on this block, there is only the repetition of fate: people going to have lunch or dinner, or fights, with those people they’re bound to see: family members, in-laws or their equivalents or substitutes.
Really, they’re not any different from people who’re spending the overcast afternoon indoors because it rained in the morning. They’re drawn by the momentum, the inertia of destiny, like amusement park rides that continue to run even when nobody’s on them.
It was on such a Sunday afternoon that I learned that some things couldn’t be stopped or steered any more than the forces of life—or death—on this block.
I think there’s always a moment—I’d’ve called it a decisive moment but for the fact that I don’t believe in a humanoid god—when a person begins the deperate run from this block or takes the first steps in the march to death.
I was chopping onions for the huge bowl of salad that would accompany the two big pans of lasagna she was making even though none of her friends or neighbors was coming over that day. They decided they didn’t want to go out in the rain, even after it stopped.
But we made that big Sunday dinner anyway, even though neither of us got hungrier on Sunday than on any other day of the week. Or at least not hungrier enough that either of us noticed. There’d be leftovers for the rest of the week, at least. Not that I minded: I’d rather eat my favorite foods—and I’ve never eaten anything that’s more satisfying than that lasagna-- a few days after they were made than something I don’t like as much fresh off the stove.
But leftovers weren’t the reason my mother went ahead and made that big dinner anyway. She didn’t eat much of them herself. And I couldn’t’ve, even if I’d wanted to. So I didn’t know what the reason was, but leftovers weren’t it.
She’d’ve made that huge Sunday meal, or something else just as voluminous, no matter what. She always had and, I realized that day, she always would.
She always did. After I left this block, she’d always tell me what she was cooking whenever we talked. For a long time I wondered whether she was trying to entice me back, but I realized that she knew I wasn’t coming.
She was going to make those meals, no matter what. Before she had me in her kitchen, and long after she knew I’d never be there again, she cooked. We—or she—‘d eat them, or whatever portion we could, whether or not we were hungry. That’s what we and everybody else on this block did in the presence of a big Sunday meal.
Hunger is the reason to eat; the hunger of several people is the reason to cook a big meal. I realized that was how I’d live—it’d be my philosophy of life, if you will. Talk when there’s someone to talk to, broadcast when you’re trying to reach a lot of people. It’s not a matter of what you’re trying to say, or whether you have anything to say just as, really, almost anything will do when you’re really hungry. Of course spinach and mineral water are better for you than hot dogs and soda, but you don’t think about that when you’re truly hungry: that is to say, when you’re not thinking about the vitamins or other substances your body breaks down when…I was going to say, when you no longer experience hunger, but I realized for all I know , there may be more of the same after death.
Mother cooked, no matter who was or wasn’t there. Adam talked—to me, to anybody who’d sit still for a while—even though he didn’t have anybody to talk to. They died on this block. So did Moon, the football player who attacked me, when he got into a fight with a guy who wasn’t perceptibly gay, hadn’t stolen his girlfriend (whether or not he ever actually “had” her or not) and hadn’t looked at Moon the wrong way because, well, he hadn’t looked at Moon the wrong way and thus couldn’t be accused of a provocation.
Of course, on that gray mirror of a Sunday afternoon when I learned about fate, I couldn’t yet know what propelled Adam to his death or what he’d share with anyone who’d died and would die on this block. I knew only that I wasn’t going to die, at least not there or here. I couldn’t. I didn’t know why—I just knew I wouldn’t. That knowledge terrified me as much as—possibly more than—knowing that I’d have to make a choice not to.
I didn’t know how or when I would leave her kitchen—or this block—for the last time. I knew only that I would. For that matter, I knew that I wasn’t going to spend much more time in school, even though I had no premonition that Moon, Jack and Tigler would attack me.
I only knew that mother was going to make her dinner. That some people were spending the day indoors because it’d rained in the morning. And that the rides in the amusement part would run whether or not anybody was there to ride them.
And—I didn’t know how I knew this—I could never be a man, not even a young one, on this block. Not a woman, either. So I wouldn’t’ve been able to stay in the kitchen, with mother, for much longer.
