Louisville Magazine is Louisville's city magazine, covering Louisville people, lifestyles, politics, sports, restaurants, entertainment and homes. Includes a monthly calendar of events.
Issue link: https://loumag.epubxp.com/i/89420
thing can truly do that — but it eliminates pretense, at the very least. A Band-Aid ripped off in a single, uniform swipe. Brenda sighs spectacularly, putting her withered hand to her heart. "Oh, Alice, dear, I'm so sorry! I didn't mean to — I'm sorry for your loss," she stumbles without grace. I smile, in what I can only hope is a warm and reassuring manner, although I don't par- ticularly care if it's not. "It's fine. I under- stand." "I really am . . . sorry," Brenda whispers. "Tank you," I answer truthfully. A few months ago, Brenda's hushed stam- mers would have infuriated me. I would have smiled bleakly, made some trickle of an ex- cuse, and walked out of the library with glassy eyes, a hardened heart. Months ago, every fal- tering well-wisher sent daggers into my ab- domen. Months ago, ordinary people on the street angered me, because they didn't care you were gone. Months ago, I didn't know how to talk about it, how to live, how to go on. Today — today, it's not so bad. She means well. Tey all do. Every detail of every day reminds me of you, my darling boy. Tat part will never change. I see your smile in the starry eyes of a stranger, hear your jubilant laugh when I see cartons of take-out Chinese, sense your warmth when I pass the classic cinema the- ater on Tird and Warren. No parent should ever live to see the death of a child. It's some- thing akin to torture. A searing, never-fading pain. No, the sadness is the same. I think what matters is that I've decided there's no escaping it. I can finally feel the sting of sorrow in my veins without resentment or crippling regret. I sense it; I take it for what it is. I've started volunteering at the library four times a week, you'll be happy to know. Amelia still calls me every other night, and I take the train down whenever I can to be with Lucy after school. I think I might take a pottery class, too. I realized soon after you left that things could never really go back to normal — normal went away when you did. But this is me, remembering my beautiful freckled boy grinning at the bat; donning a Dairy Queen apron at sixteen; bestowing on me warm, one-armed hugs on Tanksgiving. Tis is me sewing together a new life with- out you. I think you would be proud of me. I think things will get easier. I think I'll be okay. You never wasted your life, Will. You lived it with such passion, such blinding vivacity. It's only true to your memory that I try to do the same. I miss you. ual High School, is a freshman at Columbia University/PoSciences. Nikita Perumal, a graduate of DuPont Man- 11.12 LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE [83] Behind the Screen By Catherine Jennings T o be straightforward, I am desperately in love with Liverpool Football Club. Te doomed, obsessive, never-let-you-go kind of love. Tis affliction can be inconvenient, as the time difference between England and the U.S. means that I am often awake at 6 a.m. to watch matches on Saturday. Anfield, the Liv- erpool stadium, is already feverish with noise when I boot up the computer — 40,000 fans screaming for blood, the banners and scarves and jerseys dissolving into a kind of living, breathing entity that rises and falls with the action on the field, just as it has done for more than a hundred years. Above it all are the strains of Liverpool's anthem, "You'll Never Walk Alone," the words surging out of every mouth in messy, imperfect unison: "Walk on, walk on/ with hope in your heart/ and you'll never walk alone." And that's it: For the next 90 minutes, the crowd is transfixed, untouch- able, alternately raging and deliriously glee- ful. I can only watch in astonishment. From the cocoon of my bed, it is easy to appreciate this display. Any spectator would feel a certain solidarity with these fantasti- cally animated people, many of whom wit- nessed the glory days of the 1970s and 1980s enshrined in the songs they sing today. Te sheer spectacle of it is enough to chill even the most detached viewer, the camera panning across the seething mass of red and white, perhaps zooming in on one elderly man clutching a scarf he's owned since he was 13, or a club icon up in the owner's box, stand- ing and singing with everyone else. Passion in its rawest form — but passion that is 3,000 miles and countless moments of history away from me. Passion that, to be honest, doesn't belong to me. Not really. My first brush with soccer came during the 2006 World Cup, held in Germany, and the Italian national team's tumultuous run to the final, which it eventually won by defeating France on penalty kicks. I spent hours in a family friend's basement, muscles tensing and relaxing as tiny figures whose names I didn't know moved a ball around a field on the TV. Had I been five years younger — or perhaps five years older — this might have seemed strange: How could this be happening some- where I had never been, where the people didn't even speak English, and also happen- ing right here in front of my eyes? Why would I care so much about these anonymous men; why was I so furious when the Frenchman Zinedine Zidane (one of the best players of all time, though I didn't know it then — only that I hated him beyond belief in that mo- ment) inexplicably head-butted Marco Ma- terazzi in extra time of the final? (He later told the media that Materazzi had insulted his sister, and that he "would rather die" than