I put on my glasses, and the words in green ink swam and then settled. Beside my name, in the tidy hand that Mrs. Ravenel used to label her seed packets, were the words, “To Cornelius Grimball, son of Isaiah Grimball of Wesley Methodist, I convey the carriage house, the walled garden and the potting shed, in fee simple, with all the tools therein, for twenty nine years of making this place beautiful, and a lifetime of making me laugh.” I read it again. Mrs. Pinckney Ball stood with her hand on my shoulder while I wept into a handkerchief that smelled of lavender and old paper.
She poured me a glass of water and sat across the table. “Eugenia came in herself last January, in a hat with a feather,” she said. “She told me, Marion, my son in law thinks that garden is a line in a ledger. It is not. It is my whole life. And the only person who has ever understood it is Cornelius.” She smiled. “She wrote the deed on this very table, with a green pen, and she had it recorded the same afternoon. She also left a gift to Wesley Methodist on Johns Island, for the roof. She said your father would have wanted the church to stay dry.” I could not speak.
On Monday, the lawyer read the will in the front drawing room of the house on Tradd Street. Sterling sat in the good chair, with Caroline beside him in a black dress. When the lawyer reached my name, Sterling put his glass down so hard that the sherry sloshed. “The carriage house and the garden are the best part of the property,” he said. “Without them, the main house is just a box on a narrow lot.” The lawyer turned a page. “It is exactly as Mrs. Ravenel wrote it, Mr. Whitlock. The deed was recorded in January, and it cannot be undone.” Sterling went the color of the walls.
A line in green ink beside his name gave one son in law the weekend to bring Cornelius back to the garden in Charleston.
I did not raise my voice. My father taught me that a gardener should never be loud, because the plants can hear. I stood in the doorway with my hat in my hands and said, “Mr. Sterling, I am not going to put anybody out of anything. You may keep the house and the front lawn. All I ask is three things. You will return the pruning shears of my father and his grafting knife, which are in the potting shed. You will open the iron gate for me, any time I come. And you will never again call a man the help, in front of the plants he raised.” Sterling swallowed hard and nodded.
The surprise came on Sunday, when I walked into Wesley Methodist on Johns Island and found the pews full. The pastor had heard from Mrs. Pinckney Ball, and the church ladies had baked for three days. When I walked in, everyone rose. Old Sister Hattie, who was ninety four, took my hands and said, “Cornelius, your daddy planted the first rose bush behind this church. We have been praying for you since he passed.” The choir sang an old spiritual about a garden by the river, and I stood in the aisle with tears running down my face.
The money consequences came swiftly. Sterling had signed a contract with a developer who wanted to build townhouses on the lot, and the developer pulled out when he learned the garden was no longer part of the sale. A house with no garden, and a carriage house owned by someone else, was worth nearly half a million dollars less. Sterling had promised the proceeds to partners in Atlanta, and he had to scramble for a loan. The old family firm that had employed him quietly asked him to reconsider his position. For a long season, he did not come to Charleston.
I did not want him ruined, because Mrs. Ravenel loved her daughter. So I made him an offer. The main house could keep the front half of the garden, the camellias and the roses on the street side, and I would tend them myself for a fair price. In return he would put a historical easement on the whole property, so that no one could ever build on that garden. Caroline cried when I told her. “Cornelius,” she said, “you are giving back more than you ever took.” I said that plants do not know about ledgers, and neither should people.
My daughter Lucinda drove down from Columbia with her boys, who are fourteen and twelve. She stood in the carriage house door and said, “Daddy, I should have taken you in. I was a coward.” I took her face in my hands. “Baby,” I said, “you were scared. Now I have two bedrooms and a window on the fountain.” The boys ran out to explore the brick paths, and the oldest picked up the pruning shears of my father and held them reverently. I showed him how to hold them, and I knew then that the garden would outlive me.
With part of the first spring, I started a program in the name of Mrs. Ravenel. The Eugenia Garden Fund gives seeds, tools and lessons to children in the neighborhoods of Charleston who have never grown a plant. We hold the class on Saturday mornings in the walled garden, under the live oak. Twenty two children came the first week, in sneakers and borrowed gloves. A boy named Jamal planted his first tomato seed, patted the dirt over it and whispered, “Grow.” I thought of Mrs. Ravenel on the bench, with her two glasses of sweet tea, and I could hardly stand.
On a golden Friday in October, I sat on the bench under the live oak with two glasses of sweet tea. Caroline sat beside me, and for a while neither of us spoke. The camellias were in bud, and the fountain made its quiet music. Caroline picked up the empty glass. “Mother used to say you had the green thumb of an angel,” she said. I smiled. “Fifteen minutes,” I said. “The azaleas will forgive us.” She laughed, and then she wept, and I took her hand, and the light came through the leaves in long gold ribbons.