Five(54)

The twins will combine their winnings with the tiny sum Doreen leaves them to start their first electrical business. Danny will handle the administrative end while Liam does the design and the practical work. They will grow it into the largest assistive technology firm in the United Kingdom, D-Tech, the “D,” of course, for Doreen. They will be known internationally. They will become wealthy and important men—kings after all.

But this evening, still some time away from all of this, under the dull kitchen light, Danny says, “Go—on—Mum.”

“I should save it for best, for company,” Doreen says, running her thumb over the Dubonnet label and looking at her son.

Danny puts out one of his hands for her to hold. “He—needs—me—now,” he tells her.

“Good lad,” Doreen says, and pushes the hair out of her Danny’s eyes. “Suppose one sip won’t hurt,” she says, and carefully opens the bottle.

Doreen dies when she is sitting in her favorite chair in the front room of the same flat she brought her boys home to twenty-two years ago, newly born. On her right, Danny sits in his wheelchair, and on his right, Liam sits on the settee, only the arm of the sofa between him and his brother. It is Saturday evening. They are watching Stars in Their Eyes, which is Doreen’s favorite show and which her boys watch with her because they love her.

Doreen says, “Three, lad,” to Liam as he spoons the third sugar into her tea and passes it to her. They’re having tea after supper and some biscuits from a tattered box she brought home from Sainsbury’s that she got for half off plus her employee discount.

She sips her sweet, sweet tea and thinks to herself for the thousandth time in twenty years that she really should launder those curtains, and regrets that now she won’t have the chance, as a thunderclap no one else can hear explodes inside her head. The pain is immense, but she sees her Liam, so big and muscular and broad and handsome pointing at the screen and making his brother laugh. As the feeling drains from her left side, Doreen regrets that she never had the money to fix the gap between his teeth that she knows secretly bothers him, but that she has always loved. The last thing she sees before her vision is lost and another blood vessel explodes in her brain is her Danny, smiling with the box of biscuits in his lap. As her breath stops, Doreen can still hear his hoarse, gasping laugh as Liam says something rude about the lady on stage impersonating Barbra Streisand. Lads, she thinks, her lads, and the word feels like a smile. And as the mug of tea drops from her hand and her soul leaves the room, she regrets nothing at all.



* * *





Liam was about to tell her and Danny about Kate. That they want to move in together. That they’re going to find a flat nearby. But before he has a chance to mention it, Doreen drops her tea and dies.

The twins grieve their mother, as they will the rest of their lives, in the way that sons grieve mothers and daughters don’t, until the daughters become the mothers of their own sons, and then they understand their mothers, finally. The twins also decide to start their business, right there, in the flat.

The brothers live and work side by side. Danny works all day with Liam and finishes his degree at night. Liam stops working for other people and puts all his time into the business. They eat tinned beans for weeks at a time, but they don’t mind because they know why they’re doing it. Danny sees his brother’s eyes change, the resentment disappears.

Liam puts off his plans with Kate.

“I’ve got to look after Danny,” he says to her, which in the immediate aftermath of Doreen’s passing she understands.

“No, love, not yet, I promise, soon, but you know, I’ve got Danny,” he says a year later when her patience starts to run thin.

“There’s nothing I want more, really, Katie girl, it’s just, my life is so complicated, with the business, and looking after Danny, it’s not fair to you, I understand that, you need to move on,” he says six months after that, when she is unsure whether he ended it with her or she ended it with him.

“Sad—ab—out—Kate?” Danny asks Liam at dinner one night.

“Not really, we’ve got so much on, and we’re growing so fast, I don’t have time for it, and I lost interest to be honest, so I let her down easy. She’s a good girl, but not right now,” Liam says.

“How—did—you—do—it?” Danny asks.

“I just said the business and of course with looking after you my life was too complicated, and she shouldn’t wait around and she should just go,” Liam says.

“Me?” Danny asks.

“Yeah, you, of course,” Liam says. “You’re an iron-clad excuse. She can’t even be that mad at me if I say I’ve got you, for fuck’s sake, what’s she going to say? And it’s the truth anyway, isn’t it?” Liam says, as he clears their plates.

Iron-clad excuse. Danny absorbs the impact of each word as it hits him. He reaches for his crutches and walks across the flat with his distinctive gait, each step swinging out in turn from his inverted knees that knock each other slightly as he slowly, haltingly reaches the chair where his mother died, next to the window with its old curtains. He looks out onto the street where they have lived all their lives, and thinks of Liam’s blackened fingernails, his aching back, his debt to God. Liam taking him everywhere with him when they were boys, until they grew up, and then he didn’t anymore. He thinks about the business plan, the structure he laid out, the presentations and pitches he wrote for Liam to deliver to investors, the money that his ideas—no, his brilliance—was bringing in. As far as the business goes, Danny doesn’t need Liam. He works hard, certainly, but Liam isn’t exceptional. He could be replaced, although Danny would never do that. He would never abandon the brother who needs him so much.