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My daughter-in-law paid a woman to replace me. My grandkids call her Nana. They call me “the smelly lady.” I found out on Grandparents' Day. I drove 2 hours up I-85 to my grandson Wyatt's new school. I had a 3-layer chocolate cake belted into my passenger seat. My overnight bag was in the back, in case they asked me to stay. I hadn't seen him in 5 weeks. For 7 years, I slept in my son's guest room every Monday through Thursday. I taught that boy to tie his shoes. Then in August, my daughter-in-law Kendall said the guest room was getting painted. It takes a long time to paint a room, I guess. The lady in the school office looked at me twice. “We already have Wyatt's grandmother here. She signed in at 8:02.” “I'm Wyatt's grandmother.” She pulled his emergency card. My name was on it, in my son's handwriting, with a line through it. Under it, in Kendall's neat printing: D. Marchand, grandmother. I walked down to the school gym anyway, carrying that cake. “Wyatt!” He looked right at me. Then he ran past me and put his face in the shirt of a tall woman in cream linen. She was maybe 65. Gray hair down to her shoulders, laughing with her head thrown back. It was 88 degrees out, and she looked like she'd just stepped out of a cold shower. Around her neck was a lanyard, with a label from Kendall's label maker. NANA. My blouse was stuck to my back. That boy used to put his nose in my neck and breathe in. Kendall came across the gym, smiling with every tooth she owns. “Oh. Mrs. Lark. You came.” I paid for that woman's rehearsal dinner. Then my granddaughter Poppy, who's 5, looked around her mother's leg and said it loud enough for the folding chairs. “Mommy, the smelly lady's here.” Kendall didn't say, “Poppy, that's your grandmother.” She pulled Poppy in behind her, the way you'd move a child away from a strange dog. I set the cake on the cookie table. Nobody cut it. That night, my son Grant sat at the kitchen table. Kendall stood at the counter with her label maker, doing the spice jars. There's a sign by her front door that says This Is A Fragrance-Free Home. She had it made. “Who is that woman?” “Delphine. I found her on Nextdoor. Grandmother-type, CPR. It's a real thing now, Bet. 32 dollars an hour. The kids call her Nana because I asked them to.” “They have a grandmother. I'm sitting right here.” The label maker clicked. CUMIN. “You fell asleep on Wyatt's floor in the middle of his Legos. I have a picture.” I knew about the picture. I knew about the soap, too. Back in July, I came out of the shower in that guest bathroom, and there was a bar of unscented Dove on my towel, with a yellow Post-it and a smiley face. “For you!” I never said a word. I put it in my glove box. Kendall put the label maker down. “It's on the towels, Bet. It's on the car seats. I wash the guest sheets twice, and I can still smell it. “I had to wash Poppy's hair after she napped on you. “The kids can smell you before you're in the room.” I couldn't feel my hands. “Grant. Tell her.” I worked 9 years in a school cafeteria to put my son through Clemson. He looked at his plate. There wasn't anything on it. “Mom. It's just easier.” Nobody walked me to the door. I drove until I couldn't see the road, and I stopped at the Hampton Inn in Gastonia. I don't have a husband to call. Mine left 14 years ago, and nobody in this family misses him. In the hotel bathroom, I held my blouse up to my nose. I couldn't smell a thing. So I called my sister Noreen, who has told me the truth about every man and every haircut since 1980. “Kendall says I smell.” Noreen didn't say anything. 61 years, and I had never heard that woman go quiet. “Noreen. Do I?” “Honey. Since about the time your doctor took you off that patch.” I sat down on the edge of the tub. “You sweat through your nightgown every single night, Bet. You sleep on towels. You lie in it till morning, and it gets in your hair and your pillow and your car. You can't smell it because you live in it.” “I went through menopause 12 years ago. That's supposed to be over.” “Who told you that?” My doctor, more or less. When I turned 60, he took my patch away. “At your age, we don't do that anymore.” He said it with his hand on the door. Since then, I'd woken up soaked at 2 in the morning, every night. Freezing by 3, with my teeth going and my blanket on the floor. 4 hours a night, in pieces. That's why I fell asleep on the Legos. And the whole time, people had been stepping back. The girl at my hair salon, breathing through her mouth. My friend Lorene, who quit hugging me at church and started patting my arm. The empty spot next to me in my pew, on a full Sunday. I looked in that mirror. Gray. Bags under my eyes the color of an old bruise. And my red lipstick on top of it, same as every day since 1981. I looked like somebody had put lipstick on a corpse. And some stranger in cream linen had my grandson's face in her shirt. For 3 days, I watched her from my car, behind a church van. Sandals, not a bag under her eyes, my grandkids hanging off both arms, an old blue convertible with the top down. I hated her so much I couldn't swallow. Wednesday I followed her to her church. On the bulletin board was an index card. “Room for rent. Quiet woman preferred. Delphine Marchand.” I wiped off my lipstick for the first time since 1981, called the number and said my name was Bet Marlowe, not Bet Lark. Marlowe's my maiden name. My sister Noreen about came through the phone. “You're going to live with that woman? What's she got that you don't?” “That's what I'm going to find out.” I moved in that Sunday. A little white house with the windows open and Etta James on the radio. Delphine came to the door barefoot, eating a peach. “You must be Bet. Come in, honey, you look worn out.” We stood side by side in her hall mirror, both of us with no makeup on. That was a mistake. She was 66 and looked 50. I was 63 and looked like somebody's sick aunt. “Tuesdays and Thursdays, I've got 2 little ones here after school. If you could keep your door shut those afternoons, that'd be a help. There's more peaches.” My own grandkids, 10 feet from that door. The guest bed had a cream comforter on it, with a raised pattern all over, hanging to the floor on both sides. My grandmother had one like it. I didn't care. I was up at 2 every morning anyway. At 2, I'd go through her desk. Around 10:15 I got cold, so I got under it. Just until 2. It was lighter than it looked. My fingers found those raised rows without me telling them to. My grandmother's back bedroom in Spartanburg. Me at 6, tracing those rows like little roads. That's the last thing I remember. Sun on my face. The clock said 8:40. 10 hours and 25 minutes. I counted it twice on my fingers. My nightgown was dry. My back was dry. That comforter was still on me, hanging to the floor. For the first time in 3 years, I wasn't lying in it. I sat on the edge of that bed and cried, and I was mad about it, because I'd come there to hate her. Then I smelled coffee. Delphine was at the stove, singing, with her back to me. “Sit down, Mrs. Lark. Your eggs are getting cold.” All the blood in me went to my feet. She pointed her spatula at the refrigerator. A typed sheet from Kendall, with my picture on it, lipstick and all. “Do NOT allow Grant's mother near the kids. She's confused.” “You knew?” “Honey, I knew when you pulled in my driveway.” She started laughing. “That was your disguise? No lipstick?” “Then why'd you rent to me?” She put a plate in front of me and sat down. “I was a night nurse for 31 years. I changed a lot of sheets. I knew what was wrong with you when you came down my hall. “You've been lying wet for years. That smell isn't you, honey. That's sweat that never gets a chance to dry.” Not my doctor. Not my son. Nobody had ever told me it wasn't me. “What's on that bed?” “My mother had one in Lafayette. It took me a year to find the one small family company that still makes them the old way. It's called BohoBed. “I'm 66, and I still get the heat. I can't stop the heat. I can stop you lying in it.” “I've bought every cooling sheet they make.” “Honey, it's not your sheet. That blanket you've got at home stops at the edge of the mattress. You kick it off, you freeze, you drag it back, you're soaked. “This one's light, and it breathes, so the heat goes up and out. And it's cut so big it hangs to the floor. “When the heat comes at 2, you push it down to your waist. Your arms cool off, your legs stay covered, and you go back to sleep.” “Why are you telling me this? She's paying you.” She looked out the window over her sink. “I've got 2 grandbabies in Phoenix. My son's wife told them I'm confused, too. I've seen them twice in 6 years. “Your daughter-in-law pays me 32 dollars an hour to hold somebody else's.” She got up and went back to her singing. “Wyatt's birthday party is October 24th. That gives you 5 weeks. Wash every stitch you've got, and go order your own, honey. That one stays on my guest bed.” I ordered mine before my coffee got cold. Tuesday at 3:30, I sat on that bed with the door shut. “Nana, watch! Nana, look!” My grandson, 10 feet from me. I kept my hand on the doorknob for 2 and a half hours. I bit my knuckle so nobody would hear me breathing. At 5, I heard him ask for a grilled cheese with no crust. I heard her say, “I know.” I'm the one who knew that. For 7 years, I'm the one who knew that. That night at 2, the heat came up my chest, same as always. I pushed the comforter down to my waist. My arms cooled. My legs stayed covered. I was asleep before I could be mad about it. The night after that, I didn't wake up at all. By that weekend, I was sleeping 9 hours a night, dry. I washed every stitch I had and threw out my towel. The second week, Delphine came up behind me in her kitchen, put her nose in my hair and breathed in, like a nurse. “You smell fresh, honey,” she said. I went out in the yard so she wouldn't see me cry. The fog in my head was gone. I did the whole crossword in pen. My face came back. The girl at the Harris Teeter looked at me and said, “Are you just back from the beach?” My sister Noreen got one look at me on FaceTime. “Who did your face? Tell me his name.” My body came back. I mowed Delphine's whole yard in a tank top, my first since Clinton. The man next door turned off his weed eater to watch. He's 70. I let him look. I drove home to Greenville for one weekend. The girl at my hair salon quit breathing through her mouth. My friend Lorene came at me in the church parking lot with her hand out for the arm pat. Then she stopped, and she hugged me, and she stayed there. “Bet. You smell so good.” Somebody sat right next to me in my pew, her shoulder against mine. I cried through the whole first hymn. I got every one of them back in 2 weeks. Everybody but the 2 I drove up I-85 for. That Thursday, my door opened. My granddaughter Poppy, with a juice box. “You look like the smelly lady.” I quit breathing. She came over, put her little nose on my arm and sniffed. “But you smell nice.” Then she went back to Nana. My own granddaughter told me I smelled nice, and she couldn't tell it was me. Delphine sat out on the back steps with me that night, with a glass of wine. “Kendall was in her driveway today, fanning herself with a school flyer, sweat through her blouse. It's 60 degrees out. That girl hasn't slept since the day I met her.” She finished her wine. “October 24th, honey. Wear your lipstick.” I made the cake. I put on a red dress from Belk. And for the first time in 5 weeks, I put on my lipstick. I'd been saving it for Kendall. Kendall's backyard. A bounce house. 30 parents from the new school, and not one of them had ever seen me. For 2 months, Kendall had let every mother there think Delphine was my son's mother. I came around the house carrying the cake, with Delphine next to me in her linen. A mom named Sunita came right over. “You must be Delphine's sister! What are you two taking?” Up on the deck, Kendall turned around with a stack of paper plates. She didn't know who I was. Then she did. The smile stayed, and the color went. Delphine pulled the lanyard out of her pocket. NANA. She held it up in the air, smiling. “Kendall, honey, I quit. She's been sleeping down my hall since September.” Sunita laughed. “Wait. Quit?” “32 dollars an hour, honey. I'm the sitter.” It got so quiet I could hear the motor on the bounce house. Sunita turned to me. “I'm sorry. Who are you?” “I'm Grant's mother.” I set my cake on the table. “I'm the smelly lady.” Every mother in that yard looked at the deck. Wyatt came across the grass in his socks and stopped. “Mommy said you're confused.” “Do I look confused?” Then he walked into me, put his nose in my neck like he did when he was 3, and breathed in. “Grandma.” I felt him say it. “It's you.” I can't tell you what happened in the next minute. I know I got lipstick in his hair. When I carried the plates inside, a grandmother named Lou Ann, 68, backed me up against the kitchen island. “Honey, nobody our age looks like that. What did you do?” So I said it out loud, in Kendall's fragrance-free kitchen. “Menopause. I'm 63, and I was waking up soaked every night. You all just heard what they call me. A night nurse told me I was lying wet. Then I slept dry under one comforter.” “I sleep on a beach towel,” Lou Ann said. “I tell my daughter it's for my back.” Sunita said, “I'm 46. I'm up at 3 every night. I thought I was losing my mind.” “It's called BohoBed. You can't get it in a store.” Phones came out. Lou Ann held hers at arm's length. “Oh, my Lord. My mother had this. I'm getting the king.” Kendall came in from the deck. “What's everybody looking at?” Nobody looked up. My son followed me out to my Buick, crying in front of the neighbors. “Mom. I should've said something.” “Yes. You should have.” Then I kissed him on the cheek, because he's mine. Kendall came down the driveway behind him, sweat through her silk blouse. She wasn't showing any teeth now. “Bet. What did you do to your face?” Delphine was already in my passenger seat. I leaned in, reached across her and opened the glove box. It was still in the wrapper. Unscented Dove, yellow Post-it, smiley face. I put it in Kendall's hand and closed her fingers around it. “For you,” I said. I backed out of that driveway with Delphine laughing so hard she had to hold on to the door. Last week Kendall texted me at 3:14 in the morning. “The guest room's done. Can you come back Mondays?” I slept through it. I answered at 9. “I'm fine where I am.” I'm home in Greenville, with my comforter on my bed and a second one in my guest room. I flew to Phoenix with Delphine and carried her bags. Her son's wife looked at her for a long time. Then 2 little kids came around their mother's legs. My son drives my grandkids down every other Saturday. Sunday mornings, I've got Wyatt on one side and Poppy on the other. Poppy kicks all night, and that comforter never moves. My coffee's going cold, and I've got nowhere to be. They call me Grandma. Poppy says I smell like cake. I wasn't old. I wasn't confused. I wasn't dirty. I was lying wet every night for 3 years, and they all looked at that and called it my age. It's called BohoBed. A small family company still makes it the old way, light and breathable, cut big enough to hang to the floor on both sides. You can't buy it in a store. You get 30 nights to try it. Get one for your bed and one for your guest room. Your grandkids are going to want to stay. Don't wait until somebody else is holding them. Your move.