Burying his brush strokes, covering his tracks.

In retrospect we should've seen it coming, but who anticipates plague or senile dementia? The once-great cook botched the proportions in some recipes and confused sugar with salt in others. Going to church became more of a chore than it was worth for an eighty-five-year-old woman so my grandmother's friends took turns visiting her to read from her Spanish Bible. She was just as excited to have other visitors whenever they arrived, often unreasonably so, but sometimes required prompting when it came time to greet them by name. The garlic-scented apartment where she'd lived alone for thirty years was more of a living tomb combined with an experiment under glass than a home. But what really should have tipped us off was that abomination she was creating on her living room wall.

It started off as a six-by-four oil painting that hung opposite the couch. The main subject was a small country house sheltered by the proud old limbs of a deciduous tree. A delapidated fence served as the boundary between the tall yellow grass in the yard and the tall yellow grass in the field. Shades of gray and teal made up the oblong pond next to the front porch. No smoke came from the chimney, and from the looks of things no one had occupied the property for quite awhile. The artist's signature adorned his tacky abortion in a vivid red more fitting for a portrait of a vampire than a lack-lustre pastoral scene. I'm not sure where, how, or why my grandmother acquired the piece, but I know that her taste in art and her ability to concoct tasty food were on opposite ends of the spectrum. Then again, maybe that's why she decided to modify the artist's work.

It started with just one or two, but quickly grew to six. By the time we visited the following week she'd already doubled her additions to the canvas. Drawings and photos of birds from whatever magazines and books she could get her hands on began appearing left and right on the painting. She even glued some fish from one of my books to the pond. Nothing was the right size. Birds as big as the cabin cluttered the tree's leaves and a cartoon squirrel from a children's magazine sat smiling on the fence. The fields were teeming with bright and surreal life. When she ran out of creatures to add from her collection of publications she started drawing her own with my ancient crayons and pasted the pages to the places she saw fit on the painting. Somewhere in a shallow grave the original artist was rolling over. His vision, dull as it was, had been corrupted by a woman who'd never driven a car, tasted alcohol, worn pants, or formed a complete sentence in English. My grandmother single-handedly shamed a person she'd never met beyond all salvation. It humored us at the time, but time is known to change.

We should've read the signs and recognized that what was really on the wall was that proverbial writing. Instead we chose to laugh. And now, six years after my grandmother had to move in with my mom, I'm left to wonder two things: what ever happened to that huge collage she gave birth to in the glorious glare of her mental decline, and does she even remember the joy it brought her?