Тэд Уильямс: The War of the Flowers

He could only shake his head at this torrent of fury, judged guilty of neglecting a child who didn't even exist.

Don't pretend it would be different. The anger had finally brought color back to her bloodless face, coarse little patches of red like sunburn. It's always the same with you. You're a grown man, Theo, but you act like a teenager. ' Where are you going?' 'Out.' 'When are you coming back?' 'I don't know .' I can't believe I was going to have a kid with you."

"Is this all about me coming back late that night… ?"

No, Theo. But it's all about a hundred, a thousand other things like that. The shit you start and never finish. Your going-nowhere job. Coming home late smelling like the… the Fillmore West or something, hanging around with your teenage musician friends. You've probably got little teenage groupies, too. ' Wow, Theo, do you really, like, remember the Eighties ?'"

"That's bullshit." His fists were clenched. "Bullshit."

"Maybe. Maybe I'm being unfair, Theo. I'm sorry — I've just lost a baby, remember? But I've hit the end of the road and that isn't bullshit."

"Look, I know that women and motherhood is like this sacred thing, but you're not the only goddamned person who lost a baby here, Cat! I was going to be a father."

She stared at him for a moment without speaking. "When I first met you, Theo," she finally said, "I thought you were the most amazing man I'd ever known. Beautiful — you really were beautiful, even my friends agreed on that. And you had that voice, and that… charm. Like you were someone out of a movie, with perfect lighting and choreography and good writers. You charmed me, all right, but I don't see it any more. Either it's fading or I just woke up."

Anger made him feel like his skin was tight, like he was the Incredible Hulk or something, growing muscles. But he was standing over a woman who'd just gone through a miscarriage, a woman in a hospital bed. He opened his fists, made himself take a deep breath. "So not only are you breaking up with me, you're telling me I'm shit, too? Just, what, as a going-away present? A parting gift for the losing player? You thought you should just let me know I'm a big fake and I'm not worth anything?"

"No, Theo. But I am saying that something about you has changed, and what's left isn't enough, at least for me. I don't want to spend the rest of my life hoping that things will get better, that you'll stop being a good-looking, footloose guy with potential and start being a real man. Okay, you sang 'The Way You Look Tonight' to me on our first date and I fell for you, but it's not enough to last a lifetime. I don't know why I couldn't see that until the miscarriage, but I sure see it now. I'd rather be single. I'd rather have a baby by myself, if I can even get pregnant again. So why don't you take the time while I'm at my parents' and get your stuff and find an apartment or something."

"You're throwing me out of my own house? I pay half the rent!"

"Barely. But it was my house first, anyway, remember? I only let you move in because Laney was getting a place with Brian and it was easier than putting an ad in the paper."

He stood, full of diffuse rage and with a hole in the center of him that seemed like it could never be filled. "Is that all it was, huh? Easier than putting in an ad?"

It took a moment, but her expression softened. "No, that wasn't all it was. Of course not. I loved you, Theo."

"Loved." He closed his eyes. Everything had just liquified and swirled away from him, his entire life gurgling down the drain.

"I probably still love you, if that's what you're asking. But I can't live with you any more. It's too much work, trying to believe in us. I'm too old for fairy tales."

When he passed her parents in the hallway, their embarrassed expressions showing that they knew damn well what their daughter had just told him, he wanted to say something cutting to them, something bitter and clever, but he was too empty, too angry, too sad. The only thing he could think of was "It's not fair!" and that was not the kind of thing thirty-year-old men were supposed to say.

Half a day's drive outside the great city, far enough away to intrude only lightly on the consciences of families and friends — consciences underdeveloped by both habit and breeding in many of the leading clans — the mansion stood. It had once belonged to a scion of the upstart Zinnia House, but the fortunes of that family had fallen as swiftly as they had earlier risen, and although it still bore their name and crest above the door, the former inhabitants had sold the huge house long ago and moved to more modest digs in the city, a collection of family apartments near the waterfront where they could keep a close watch on their shipping interests and dream of better days gone — and, they hoped, better days still to come.

But Zinnia Manor remained, nestled in a fold of the forested hills of True Arden, surrounded by grounds that although less carefully cultivated than in its happiest days were still green and sumptuous and, most important of all, large enough to create privacy.

The manor had three or four times as many inhabitants now as when the family still owned it; the administrator, Mr. Lungwort, a small, dapper fellow whose rudimentary wings had resisted all attempts at cosmetic removal, growing back several times and thus forcing him to try to hide them with carefully padded suits, claimed it was more like managing a village than a house. Besides the regular residents there were several dozen staff, including cooks, maids, janitors, and gardeners, not to mention the nurses and orderlies. Two alienists and a certified chirurgeon were on duty at all times, and other practitioners were kept on call for when things got busy, as they often did during full moons.

In such a large facility, with an impressive catalog of patients whose conditions were vivid and even occasionally dangerous — inverted shadows, spontaneous creation, infectious hallucination, and several variants of uncontrollable shapeshifting — it was strange that the most noteworthy resident should be so quiet and inoffensive. She had her own suite of rooms on the south side of the manor, courtesy of her famous and powerful family (which, except for occasional visits from one brother, wanted nothing to do with her anymore) but she might as well have been living in a ditch beside the highway for all the notice or advantage she took of her surroundings. Day after day the morning sun splashed into her room, but she never raised her eyes to the windows. Day after day attendants came and got her out of the bed where they had placed her the night before, then washed and dressed her, manipulating her slack body as though she were a corpse being readied for burial. Day after day, at least when the weather was fair, they set her in a sedan chair — not an easy task, even for some of the larger, stronger creatures on the staff, for although the patient was slender, she was tall and long of limb, and always as limp as a sack — and rolled her out to the manor's garden.

There she would remain, eyes staring straight out at nothing, the hands her attendants had folded still lying neatly in her lap, her handsome, fine-boned face as hollowly purposeless as a bell with no clapper, until someone came and took her away again.

Once, during one of the power outages, which were occurring in the city and its outskirts with worrying frequency these days, a muddled staff had neglected to bring her in. The night nurse, seeing her empty bed, had gone looking for her and found her still sitting in her chair in the garden, staring at nothing, her dress soaked with dew and her milk-white skin goose-pimpled with cold.

Mr. Lungwort had been very upset about that, not so much out of pity — it was hard for anyone with the administrator's somewhat narrow personality to pity something that showed no more liveliness than a lump of wax — but out of fear that her wealthy family might discover the mistake and remove her from Zinnia Manor, along with her sizable endowment. Two nurses were sacked and a night orderly was severely reprimanded, but the patient herself gave no sign that her night outdoors had made any difference.