Five(51)

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In the beginning, they weren’t sure what Danny knew and what he didn’t know, what he could do and what he couldn’t. That is the nature of cerebral palsy. In the beginning, Doreen knew she would be able to do little about the physical difference between her baby boys, but the difference in their futures, she knew, she could make level.

Doreen was told by a doctor that Danny might not speak, or walk, or read. She was told by another to be grateful that he was not her only child, because she would not be able to have any more. She was told by an auntie about hope, by a neighbor about God not giving more than she could handle, and by the priest about how merciful it was that Danny would never be aware of his limitations.

She was told, she was told, she was told, she was always being told something by someone who looked at her and her boys and saw only deficiency, because they never asked Doreen to define abundance.

Always after she was told, Doreen, being a woman of few words, simply tucked the loose strands of her auburn hair behind her ears, lifted her chin, and said, “Thank you,” with the slight sound of Ireland in her voice and one arched eyebrow that conveyed the exact opposite of gratitude. Then she wrapped her sons up warm and held one on her hip and held the hand of the other and walked out into the world with them.

She was not concerned about what she was told because she knew that the tellers did not know that the hearts of her sons were identical, even if nothing else was, and that each one beat in rhythm with her own. The tellers did not see her beautiful boys at night, little Liam sleeping curled around his brother’s stiff limbs. They were not there the day that Liam shouted, “Mum, look at ’im!” while Danny took his first steps, leaning on his brother, did not hear her say, “You two are miracles,” holding back tears as she held them close. They did not see how Danny, bright as a spark, helped Liam with his English homework because he wrote everything back to front, did not see her pride when they held each other up, her joy when she heard them laughing at some secret joke only they knew.

After the beginning of their story, and approaching its middle, Doreen and her boys found their way. There was, of course, derision or pity, and often both, everywhere they went. People saw Doreen, with her tired green eyes, as the poor, pretty, long-suffering mother, Danny as the poor “spastic” boy, Liam as the poor neglected normal child. Doreen never argued or corrected this misinterpretation of her family, and if she was offended she never let anyone know it.

She saved her words instead for reading to Danny every day until he learned to read himself. When it was clear to her that he was far more intelligent than his teachers recognized at the local school, she took on an extra shift and paid for a succession of tutors, many of whom she dismissed almost as soon as they entered the flat and introduced themselves to Danny in a slow, loud voice or with an undertone of condescension, or with pity, like he was a lost kitten. When she found the one that spoke to Danny like he deserved to be spoken to, Doreen said to her only, “You can come back tomorrow.”

The brothers did everything together. Liam, big and strong for his age, pushed Danny everywhere in his wheelchair. When they played football with the other lads, Danny would be in goal with Liam, as Liam sometimes pushed him round to block a shot, sometimes got him to standing and had him lean on him in goal as they lunged together with varying success. The other children around them grew up knowing the twins as a unit and for the most part never questioned it. The few times anyone imitated Danny’s slow speech or laughed at a jerky movement or let slip a “spaz,” they had Liam to answer to, and they never did it again.

But this happened rarely, and not just because of Liam’s brawn. Danny was clever, a schemer, a master manipulator of the public’s interpretation of his life. And while he could not run or kick or play hide-and-seek, he soon figured out that he could pretend to have seizures in his wheelchair right in front of the till, which distracted shopkeepers long enough for one of the gang to take a few Mars bars without notice, and everyone would get at least a half. Or Liam would push Danny into the cinema and suddenly catch an uneven bit of carpet, tipping Danny onto the floor, creating just the right diversion for the other boys to sneak past into the theater undetected. “Nice one, Danny,” they’d all whisper when he and Liam eventually joined them, passing their free popcorn down the row.

There did inevitably come a time when their group’s attention turned from playground games to chatting up girls and they no longer cherished stolen sweets but preferred cans of lager to drink in the park at twilight, when they were still too young to go to the pub.

“He’ll be fine in goal, Mum, don’t worry,” became “I can’t take him out tonight, he’ll get too cold,” or “We’ll be in the park, mate, it’s too hard with the chair or the crutches, you’ll fall,” and Danny would spend the evening with Doreen while Liam went out to feel what it was like to be by himself in the world, without a wheelchair in front of him, without one eye always on his brother. And Danny felt the ache of being left behind, felt the acute pain of his difference, once disguised by the games of their childhood that everyone had now outgrown.

But always when Liam came home from these forays into manhood, he’d wake his brother and breathe whiskey and beer on Danny while he told him who he saw, and what this girl or that girl looked like, and how far he had gotten with her or, more truthfully, how he had gotten nowhere at all.