“I am getting a letter from them, Helen,” I said, “because I sold them my business.” The mother of Jenna is named Helen Whitaker, a soft spoken retired librarian from Springfield, and she had slid the white envelope toward herself with the caution of a woman who has read many mystery novels and trusts none of them. She drew out the pages. A green leaf logo. “In March, the Pearl Garden Center was bought by a company in Portland. Five million eight hundred thousand dollars. The greenhouses, the gift shop, the acre on River Road.” I picked up my mimosa and held it without drinking. “I did not tell Scott. I wanted to see how he would treat a mother with a card table and a few tomato plants.”
Helen Whitaker set down the contract and looked at it for a long time, with her hand flat on the page, as if it might blow away. Her husband Don, a gruff retired postal inspector, took the page from her and read it, his lips moving slightly. “Pearl,” he said, “this says five point eight million.” I said, “It does, Don.” He turned slowly to his daughter. “Jenna, did you know about this?” Jenna, in her yellow sundress, shook her head. Her eyes were large and frightened. “No, Dad. I did not know any of it.”
Scott stood up from the table. He is a stocky man with thinning hair, forty five years old, an accountant at a regional hospital, and he put both hands on the back of his chair. “Mom,” he said, “I can explain the refunds.” I said, “You said I owed money. For four years.” He said, “I corrected the filings. You were claiming deductions you were not entitled to.” I said, “Scott. I had one deduction, the mortgage interest, and it was paid off in 1999.” He opened his mouth. Jenna, beside him, said, in a voice that sounded like cracked ice, “Scott. Three three seven six is our joint account.”
A white envelope with a green leaf logo brought a retired librarian across a brunch table and gave one garden center founder the morning to bring her son back to the soil.
He did not answer. Helen Whitaker put her hand over her mouth. Jenna was staring at the little pot of violets I had brought as a hostess gift, and I saw that her hands were trembling on the tablecloth. “Four years,” she said. “Twenty six thousand dollars. I thought it was your overtime. I thought it was the bonus from the hospital.” She turned to her husband. “You paid for the kitchen with it.” Scott said, softly, “It was for us. For the college of the kids.” She said, “It was never ours.” Then she picked up her napkin and pressed it to her eyes, and I thought, there is a person who did not know. And that was a mercy.
I will tell you honestly what I felt, because I promised myself I would. It was not rage. I had expected rage. It was something older and quieter, a tiredness from the roots. I looked at my son across the quiche, forty five years old, with a stain of mimosa on his collar. I remembered him at six, standing on a milk crate beside my card table, selling tomato plants to the neighbors for fifty cents, and giving too much change. “Scott,” I said, “do you remember the card table?” He nodded, weeping. “You gave away change,” I said. “You were never a thief. What happened to you?”
“I do not know,” he said. And I believed him. “I think I started small. A hundred dollars, when the car broke. I told myself I would pay it back. Then it was easier the second year. Then there were the school fees, and the roof, and the surgery of the mother of Jenna. And I thought, Mom has more than she needs. She always has an extra tomato plant.” He gave a short, broken laugh. “I know it makes no sense.” I said, “It makes perfect sense, Scott. That is why it is dangerous.” He sank into the chair and put his face in his hands.
Don Whitaker cleared his throat. “Pearl, I will say what no one else is going to. Scott owes you an enormous apology, and then he owes you a restitution plan, drawn up by a lawyer, with penalties.” I said, “I have one.” I took out a third paper from my purse. It was the plan, three pages, typed by my lawyer. Scott would repay the twenty six thousand one hundred fifteen dollars over five years. The joint account would be closed. He would never again touch a single document of mine. And he would come to the nursery on Saturdays, in work gloves, and learn to pot a rhododendron.
He signed it at the table, with my pen, between the quiche and the violets, and Jenna signed beside him as a witness. His hand shook so badly that the signature wobbled across the line. When he finished, he looked up at me, and I saw the milk crate boy in his face. “Mom,” he said, “can I hug you?” I said, “You may.” He rose, and came around the table, and put his arms around me, and I felt the whole weight of him settle onto my shoulders, like a coat. “I am so sorry,” he said. I patted his back. “Plant your feet,” I said. “The soil is better than you think.”
The nursery was not mine anymore, of course, but the new owners kept the name, and the manager, a young woman named Priya, was glad to let Scott work the beds on Saturdays. She put him in the rhododendron house first, among the great pink and white blooms, with a pair of pruning shears. He learned that you must cut above the node, never below. By June, he could repot forty plants in an hour. At the end of one shift, he came to me with soil on his knees and a bloom in his hand. “Mom, what is this called?” I said, “That one is called Pride of Pearl.”
He gave me the plant for Mothers Day the following year, in a terra cotta pot, wrapped in brown paper. He had grown it himself from a cutting, in the garage, under a lamp, for eleven months. It was small and a little crooked, with five blossoms the color of an early sunrise. He set it on my kitchen windowsill, and I looked at it for a long time. Jenna and the children stood behind him. “It is not much,” Scott said. I said, “It is everything.” And the robin outside, in the cherry tree, started up again, as if the whole world had been waiting to hear.
