Тэд Уильямс: The War of the Flowers

Lungwort's records showed that her name was Erephine, but he did not encourage conversational familiarity between his staff and their charges — the "guests," as Lungwort called them — and especially not toward members of the highest Houses, however intimate the staff's interactions with them might be, however unprepossessing the patient. To her blank face, a face that animation might have made beautiful, they addressed her only as "Lady Primrose," or simply, "my lady." The sound of their voices and the touch of their careful hands seemed to mean no more to her than had the night dew. If she had been a mortal woman, and her caretakers mortal too, the word "soulless" might have been whispered, but fairies do not pretend to have souls, and if they do have such things, they are not aware of them.

To the nurses and orderlies of Zinnia Manor, many of them unabashed wearers of wings and unrepentant believers in the old tales and ways, it was clear that their unmoving, unspeaking charge, so pretty, so utterly lifeless, must have a story, something darkly romantic and grandly tragic, but if the administrator or anyone else knew it, the secret remained closely held. When the staff drank betony tea together and gossiped about Mr. Lungwort's padded suits and the disgusting proclivities of the Feverfew twins, they called her the Silent Primrose Maiden and tried to imagine what had happened to bring her to this terrible condition. Not even the most extravagant guesses came anywhere near the truth.

After all, it was possible to imagine that lives might once have been lost and reputations sacrificed for the light in her eyes, those eyes that were now so terribly, terribly empty, but none of the gossiping staff of Zinnia Manor could have guessed that soon an entire world might pass into eternal shadow for the sake of that same, dead stare.

It was a good day, one of very few in the two months since Cat's miscarriage — since the night his old life ended, as he sometimes thought of it, never considering how he might be tempting fate. A decent night's sleep and for once no bad dreams gave him a looseness in his heart and his step he hadn't felt for a while. (He had been having the same nightmare a lot lately, eerie and claustrophobic, where he was trapped in something like a room full of mist or smoke, staring out at the unreachable world through a thick window.) But today bad dreams seemed to have evaporated in the sunshine. Walking through a building lobby carrying a combination of flowers clearly chosen over the phone by someone, but guiltily displayed in an expensive vase to make up for it, he even found himself singing an old Smokey Robinson song. A pretty young receptionist (too young to be more than a momentary fancy for him, but that made it all the more satisfying in a way) told him he had a beautiful voice.

"Thanks," he said. "I'm a singer. That's my other job."

She didn't inquire further, but that was all right. It was enough just to be reminded that there was more to his life than this delivery job. The band hadn't practiced for at least three weeks — all kinds of weirdness going on there, but for once nothing to do with him, since Kris and Morgan were having some kind of feud. He was still a singer, though. He could pick up his guitar and go stand on a street corner and earn almost as much as he did dragging potted plants up elevators to overworked secretaries and retiring data clerks. Of course, almost as much as "very little" equaled "nearly nothing," so for the moment he'd keep driving the van, thank you very much.

As the bit of Second-That-Emotion falsetto and the receptionist's smile had reminded him, there was more to him than just an aging adolescent with longish hair and a Khasigian — the Florist patch sewn on the breast of his shirt. But the problem was, if his old life really had ended that night, where was the new one? It was one thing to have your girlfriend throw you out — even in such miserable circumstances there could still be something liberating in that kind of forced change. But not when you had to move back in with your mother.

It was only for a few months, of course, only until he had saved a little money for first and last on a decent apartment. He could have moved in with Johnny Battistini, who had invited him, but although he loved the man like a brother, the idea of living with him again was a bit much. Theo could never be called fastidious, as Catherine herself had often pointed out, but you didn't have to be a neat-freak to be uncomfortable with six-month-old fast food hardening to stone under the couch. He had shared an apartment with Johnny once, years before he'd met Cat, and he still hadn't shaken the memory of stepping on bugs in the dark.

Besides, it wasn't like his mother forced him to talk with her, or even to interact much at all. He had his own key. If he was home at dinnertime, which he rarely was, she would heat him up the same leftovers she was eating, or put a frozen meal in the microwave for him. If he wanted to watch a different program than she was watching, she didn't seem to mind; she would silently hand him the remote, take a book, and go to bed. She didn't make a mess, she didn't play loud music, she didn't force him to have long, boring conversations: if she had been a male roommate she would have been damn near ideal. As a mother, though, she was a little spooky.

When he had tried to explain her to Cat back when they were first dating he had stated, a bit archly, "Mom's flame of life doesn't burn all that bright." But, faint as it was, it had burned brighter once than it did now. He was suprised at how little she seemed to care about anything these days. Was it some kind of delayed reaction to his father's death almost six years ago? Or was it Theo who had changed — had living with Cat made him more used to how normal people behaved? He had no idea. Anna Vilmos was a hard woman to figure out.

She came to all his school plays, he remembered. Showed up every night when I had the lead in the musical — it must have meant something to her. But she never had much to say about it. "Very nice, Theo, you did well. I enjoyed it." That was about all, like she was talking about a piece of corned beef she'd got from the butcher . And his father had been too tired most of the time to say anything either except that the show or recital in question had been "pretty good," all the time making it clear that what he really wanted was to get home to bed because he had to get up early the next morning. See, Cat? Who can turn into a normal grown-up when his role models are polite strangers ?

But today, driving the delivery van, even the bleakness of living back at his mother's house could not dim his feeling that a change was coming, that a sort of dormancy was over. He had been surprised how powerfully the twin blows of losing Catherine and the baby had struck him. It was more than just the weird bad dreams: for weeks he had found himself bursting into mortified tears while listening to old songs on the van radio — songs he had never liked that much in the first place. Anthems of lost love, Fifties car accident weepies and horrible, saccharine tunes about dead girlfriends and children, even things that seemed to have nothing to do with his own upside-down life could catch him like a sharp needle in the heart. Once an old chestnut from the Seventies about a drowning sheepdog (as far as he could tell, since he had never listened to the lyrics very intently) made him pull over because he was crying too hard to see. But not today. Spring had actually arrived a month ago, but for the first time he could feel himself respond to it, as though he too were full of sap being warmed by the sun, as if he were about to bud.

Don't know about budding , he thought as he pulled the van into the slot behind the store. But maybe I could go out and catch a few beers with Johnny, go listen to some music . An Irish band he had heard about was playing at a club in the Mission. He considered inviting his mother — she was Irish by birth, after all, and she had a kind of weird soft spot for Johnny B., soft for her anyway. And Johnny in turn kind of flirted with her. He had actually once said, "Your mom must have been at least a semi-babe when she was young." The whole thing had been far too bizarre for Theo to deal with, but now he found himself liking the idea of taking her out with him and Johnny. Might do her good, and he would feel a little less guilty about sharing the house with her as though he were an itinerant stranger.