The Brothers' Lot - Kevin Holohan [2]
“Well, isn’t he the little saint then?”
“Declan, that’s quite enough lip out of you. Just get up, can’t you?”
“I didn’t ask to go.”
“Not this again! Look, we’re going and that’s that. We’re not having this argument again. Now, get up out of that and stop your nonsense!”
“What if I don’t?”
“The movers will be here in half an hour.”
“Well, maybe I’ll get myself a flat then.”
“You will not! You don’t have two pennies to rub together. I’ll not have any more of this talk. We’ve heard enough of it out of you.”
Her voice was getting louder and shriller. Finbar sat on the toilet and ran the water in the sink as hard as it could go. He didn’t need to hear all this over again. There’d been weeks of it already and with each week Declan had become more disagreeable to the point where now he hardly spoke to anyone in the house, not even Finbar. All because that stupid Sheila Barry had dumped him or run away from home or whatever: no one was too clear on it.
“Yeah? And why not? I can do what I want!” yelled Declan.
“Not while you’re under my roof.”
“And who says I want to be under your roof? I didn’t ask to be part of this family. I didn’t ask to be born into this.”
“Oh, Sacred Heart of Jesus, Declan, stop it!”
Finbar heard the front door slam.
“What the hell is going on up there? Ye can be heard out on the street!” called his father from the bottom of the stairs.
“Nothing,” called Declan, the fire suddenly gone from his voice and replaced by a damp, leaden resignation.
“Well, fine then! Get up so! I got some sausages and bread from Mrs. Morrissey. Breakfast in ten minutes!” shouted Mr. Sullivan.
“Finbar, are you nearly finished in there? Declan has to wash himself,” called Mrs. Sullivan as she made her way back downstairs.
Finbar reached over and slowly turned off the water in the sink.
Once breakfast was over and the dishes washed, dried, and packed into the car, Finbar sat on the footpath outside the house and watched the movers load the furniture into the back of the truck. His father hovered around them, mostly getting in the way and making their job more difficult, but Jude Sullivan was not the type of man to trust hired workmen to do a good job unless he was breathing down their necks.
“Finbar! Give me a hand with these few things,” his mother called from the front door. He took the box of photographs and ornaments from her and put it in the car. Declan stormed out of the house full of gangly seventeen-year-old bad temper and flopped into the backseat of the car. He sat there with a face like a curse on him and glared out the window at nothing in particular.
Mr. Sullivan oversupervised the movers loading the dining table and then ran back into the house. Finbar went in after him. The house echoed weirdly under his footsteps. Even the lino was gone. It had so quickly turned from his home into a shell of brick and floorboards. He watched his father stand at the top of the stairs and stare ruefully out the small window at his garden below. He went out to the car and sat in the backseat beside the silent, fuming Declan. Separated only by three years, they might as well have been from different planets. Finbar couldn’t be bothered even trying to talk to him and picked his own patch of nothing in particular to stare at and sighed.
“Will ye stop that sighing like an old woman, ye little prick! Just cos you’re going to miss the first day of school. Stupid sap,” hissed Declan.
“Ah, get lost you,” answered Finbar.
Declan rolled down the window and spat onto the street.
“Right so!” called Mrs. Sullivan as she came out of the house and pulled the door behind her. Its familiar clunk followed by the little rattle of the knocker and the letter box jabbed at Finbar with little pins of “not going to hear that sound again, boi!” He clenched his teeth and stared away down the street.
Mr. Sullivan slid into the car and foostered around under the seat trying to move it back from the steering wheel. His brother Francie, whose car it was, was a much thinner man than he. “Stupid fecking thing!” he