The name was Sidney.
My husband. Signed in at 9:40 in the morning on March 14th, purpose of visit, notary.
That is why he was holding my hand so hard. Not because he was surprised. Because he was not.
Sidney was a branch manager at a bank for thirty years and he has kept his notary commission since he retired, the way some men keep a fishing license. Paulette knew that. She had called him the week after Easter and told him that Mama wanted to add her to the accounts for convenience, so there would be two daughters who could pay the bills, and that I had agreed to it but was too worn out from nights to drive over.
He drove over. He sat in Mamas room. He watched her sign where Paulette pointed and he notarized her signature, because that is what a notary does. He did not read the forms. It is not his job to read them. He stamped them and signed the log and went to the hardware store.
He did not know until the bank called that the paperwork had removed my name. And then he did not tell me, because he was ashamed, and because he told himself it was done and could not be undone, and because he thought if he said let it go enough times I would.
He stood up in that dining room with forty people looking at him and he said all of it. I will give him that. Then he turned to my mother and said he was sorry.
And my mother, who is ninety years old and who everybody in that room had been talking about as if she were a piece of furniture, put down her fork.
She said, Paulette told me Gwen was too tired to handle it anymore. She said Gwen asked her to take over. I signed because I thought I was giving my girl a rest.
Then she looked at Paulette and said, You lied to me in my own bed.
Mama had never stopped knowing who showed up, she had only been told that I wanted to stop.
Rosalind, bless her, had already thought ahead. She asked the pastor and my aunt from Summerville to stay after the cake and listen while Mama said, in plain words, what she wanted. She wanted Gwen on the accounts. She wanted Paulette off them. She said it twice, clearly, and both of them wrote it down and signed it.
The next Tuesday I drove Mama to the bank in her wheelchair, with the pastors statement and three years of visitor logs in a folder. The branch manager took one look at the logs and one look at my mother, who told him exactly what she wanted in exactly the same words, and he restored my name that afternoon and removed Paulettes. He also put a note on the account that no further changes would be made without Mama present and a second family member of her choosing. She chose me.
Sidney surrendered his notary commission the following week. Nobody made him. He said a man who stamps what he does not read should not have a stamp.
Paulette has not been back to the home. She sends flowers on the first of the month, which the aides put in the hallway because Mama asked them to.
I still go after every shift, even though I am retired now and there are no shifts. Boiled peanuts from the Piggly Wiggly. I brush her hair. I sign the log, 6:52, 7:10, 6:45, and some nights Rosalind leaves it open on the desk for me with a pen on top.
Three hundred and eleven visits, she said that day. It is closer to four hundred now. Nobody is counting. But the book is.