He stared at the cards stacked around his bed along with all the flowers – carnations that looked like white socks that had gone in the washing machine with a new red shirt, and tulips that were opening like cupped hands.  He knew the hospital couldn’t help him.  He hoped the flowers died before he did.  That thought sickened him.  “Dear Jack, We’re thinking about you.”  He knew there’d be a lot more flowers at his funeral.  There always were – flowers at funerals.

            He thought maybe he should just walk out of there – keep walking until he was out in the middle of nowhere and wait there until it left him or he left it – until he died and then there wouldn’t be a body to bury.  There’d probably still be a funeral though.  He didn’t think he could escape that.  Especially with his son.  Maybe if he put it in his will.  But it was too late for that; he’d given it all to his son.  He thought about doing something silly – leaving everything he had to some obscure Masonic lodge or donating it all to a clown college – something that would play with his son’s flat line of a mouth.

            Was he a bitter old man now fantasising about screwing around with his hypocritical son’s high-society notions about how to do this and that?  Traditions without meaning are like praying to a god you don’t believe in.  He’d certainly done that.  As a kid.  And now he was just like his grandpa had been sixty-odd years ago: feeble, wacky, loony.  He no longer had rights.  He was taking up hospital resources and making people uncomfortable.  They all knew he was going to die – everyone except his little granddaughter.  Rosie.  Sweet, innocent Rosie.

            Damn cigarettes.  That was his wife’s fault – the way she nagged him whenever he got back from work.  Nagging, nagging, sucking all the reserves from him.  He wanted to suck back but you can’t suck the woman out of a wife like that.  Jack hovered for a while on the vivid memory of his wife – abrasive and full of life.  Just like the smoke, she had dissolved into nothing.  He’d sucked that smoke and pent it up inside thinking one day he’d have enough inside him to blow it all out and be alone for a time – all smoke around him – everything nice and muffled.  Too late to blow the smoke out now – now that it had poisoned his lungs.

            Jack used to smoke mainly to mask the smell of paint and turpentine but then he found something to relish in what a soft haze of smoke did to the world around him; sure lines became subtly fluid and harsh concentrated colour became humble.  The smoking was as much a part of his routine as laying out the paints and brushes. 

            The hospital would not let him set up an easel by his window despite the mountains outside longing to be painted.  It was the odour, they said – the chemicals – the mess.  Here he was on a precisely graduated balance where inflow met outflow, pain met morphine, waiting met chaos, and success met failure all in equal proportions.  This gave the hospital a sort of plain beauty – that the system carried on like this so regulated.  The one thing everyone failed to acknowledge was that death was leaning a scaly elbow on one side of the scale – and everyone was slowly sliding down the ramp.

            Jack’s wife, Bethany had died six years ago from her Alzheimer’s.  Being in the hospital brought back every memory like pulling on a tight, scratchy, woollen sweater; every time he moved he was reminded how ill-fitting and uncomfortable the memories were.  Jack respected that the hospital hadn’t changed – how the bitter coffee was the same even without the bitter thought of his wife breathing from a tube – how the lights were just as warmth-less even without his knowing his wife’s light was dull and dimming – how it still smelt like death and old age even though this time round he didn’t know anyone dying.  Everything Jack had come to terms with in life had settled in his bones and everything that couldn’t be reconciled wasn’t worth his attention.

            Reflecting on this, Jack barely noticed that his son had entered the room.  He opened his eyes as he heard something being set down beside him.  His son was placing another pot of cellophane-winged flowers on his bedside table.  They gave each other a long reckoning stare.  There just wasn’t much to say.

            “The nurse at the desk says you aren’t giving them any trouble,” his son said.  “Jenny bought these,” he added pointing to the fresh pot of flowers.  Jack shuffled back in bed, struggling to sit up.

            “Thanks,” he replied roughly.  Jack’s son, Pearce, folded his duffel coat over the back of a visitors chair and pulled it up alongside the bed.  “Where’s Jenny?” asked Jack, somewhat impulsively.  Pearce bore his sea green eyes into his father’s head.  “She’s picking Rosemary up from the daycare,” he said.  Jack looked away.  “We’ll all come down again tomorrow.”  Jack glanced at the cork board above his miniature garden of Eden.  It was filled with artwork made by his granddaughter – handprints and the kind of emaciated stick people that little kids draw and sometimes feel the urge to feed into developing sausage-like arms and legs when they start to move past kindergarten – Jack saw the potential in Rosie’s stick figures – in the way they didn’t seem to be just plastered to the page. 

            “Thanks.”  Pearce looked around the room noncommittally.       Jack closed his eyes again and heard the door close some time soon after.

            Jack had summed up the hospital within twenty minutes of lying in his ward.  He had then spent the following days summing up various aspects in his life.  His childhood had been easy – textbook, rural life with typical boyhood milestone experiences, strict teacher, strict parents, freckles, deciding repeatedly with friends to stay away from Battleford until they’d kissed a girl – all that stuff of a prairie upbringing.  Bethany had been the cap of all that prairie lore – big-boned, honey-blonde, tough woman with perfect, tanned skin used to bopping gophers on the heads if they got into the crops.  A son was never what he thought it would be, but it took his words away more than anything ever could.

            It was about ten years ago that he took the words away from both of them.  Since then, they barely spoke; Pearce visiting Jack in the hospital was a formality – death liked to watch his prey acknowledge his power before swooping in – death commanded certain traditions in the final hours show.  Jack had never felt what he would qualify as regret and that was probably what solidified the split between him and his son.  But Jack wasn’t baring claws either.  He wondered vaguely what Jenny would say if the three of them could sit together for a moment.

            The more Bethany forgot the quieter she became and the more Jack painted until he quit his job at the garage and converted the den into a studio of sorts.  Pearce had left by then – studying ivy league politics or something else that didn’t belong in the prairies.  The prairies were changing too though – changing as free love and long hair blew up over the border.  Jack started painting women. 

            He didn’t sleep with them like Klimt or Rivera or Picasso or any of the “muse-inspired,” sexuality-crazed classicists; he just painted them.  And Bethany slept upstairs or sat propped on the veranda like a doll staring into space.  It was the image of women dancing in the barn of his youth that he always retained – the inspiration of their bodies moving in and out of synch, flowing around inanimate beams – moving.  It was experiencing a beauty like a thirst – he had to satisfy it.  He missed the way Bethany moved.  Soon everyone knew how he painted women and soon every girl wanted a painting – it wasn’t very often that farmers’ calloused hands wielded brushes, that farmers’ squinting eyes looked so tenderly, looked so deeply.

            Pearce didn’t like it.  Although he didn’t find out until he’d married and settled on the other side of the country.  He wouldn’t have found out if he hadn’t come to visit either – it wasn’t that Jack hid anything, he just didn’t say anything. 

            Pearce’s wife Jenny rested her bare feet on the coffee table and put a hand on her husband’s knee.  She looked over at Jack.

            “Pearce tells me you painted a collection of women,” she said pointedly. 

            “Well, Pearce would be right,” he answered, looking over at his son.  Pearce’s smile had disappeared from his face.

            “Would you let me see?” she asked brightly.  Pearce’s scowled urgently.

            “Jenny, they’re naked women.  You don’t want to see that.”

            “You don’t think I can appreciate real art?” she asked, giggling.  She was standing up and pulling Jack along with her.  “You show me your paintings and Pearce can pretend we’re getting more booze.”  Jack had led Jenny to the garage, cautious that she wouldn’t trip; she was three months pregnant.  Jack’s paintings were strewn around the garage and Jenny had to lift them up or move some around to see them.  She went through them all and then she turned back to Jack. 

            “They’re beautiful,” she said.  Jack smiled. 

            “I’m painting flowers now,” he replied.  “That was just a phase.”  Jenny looked around the industrial studio.

            “That’s what artists do – go through phases,” she said.  “Picasso and his Blues, Picasso and his Roses, Picasso the cubist.”  Jack chuckled.

            “I guess so,” he replied.  Jenny was exploring a desk in the corner, placing landscapes and pictures of flowers, and portraits, and nudes against the wall to display them.  And then she lifted one out in front of her and cocked her head a little.

            “Jack, is this Bethany?” she asked.  Jack squinted into the corner.

            “That’s her,” he answered.  “I never did get around to painting her before she – before.”  Jenny turned her head around to face him.

            “Did she … let you?” she asked.  “Did she – was she still aware of everything?  Did she know who you were?”  Jenny gave the painting another long look.  It was a recent picture of Bethany, painted in the studio with a vase of flowers by her feet.  Bethany was sitting like she did outside, staring a little above an imaginary horizon, naked but for her silver necklace.

            “She would have been okay with it.  I know.  She didn’t stop me.”  Jenny carried the painting over to him.  She frowned, assessing the ethicality, assessing the artistry.

            “It’s beautiful,” she said finally, tears forming in her eyes.  “She’s beautiful.”

            But Pearce hadn’t seen it the same way.  Pearce hadn’t seen how Jack had captured Bethany’s soul, so hidden beneath her shell as it was.  Pearce took in the painting of his naked mother and reacted with explosive contempt and disgust.  They faced each other in the living room while Jenny rescued Jack’s paintings from under the mess Pearce had furiously thrust over his father’s work.

            “Painting naked women is one thing – but this is wrong!” yelled Pearce accusingly.  “This – this, I can’t believe you could have done this!”  Pearce ran his fingers urgently threw his hair and stalked across the room, pacing from the couch to the wall and back.  Jack leaned further back in his armchair and sighed.

            “What do you have a problem with?”

            “You took advantage of her.”  Jack closed his eyes for a second.

            “I painted a beautiful picture of my wife,” he replied.  But Pearce wasn’t finished explaining.

            “Bethany’s sick; you stripped off her clothes without her consent and you painted her.  You didn’t give her any dignity, you didn’t give her any rights –”

            “Since when are you calling your mother Bethany?” interjected Jack.  He glared at Jack accusingly, letting his words bite and snap at his son.

            “Since I lost her,” said Pearce shakily. 

            Bethany’s dementia had been sudden, swift, and shocking.  Suddenly she wasn’t nagging or yelling or filling the kitchen with delicious smells or doing much of anything anything.  Suddenly she was just a shell.   How do you treat a shell?

            Jenny sided with Jack.

            “Pearce, it’s beautiful.  Can’t you see how it’s a testament to your mother?  Can’t you see the kind of love that drove him to do that?”  But Pearce wasn’t finished.

            “It’s disgusting.  It’s sick and twisted and wrong – completely unethical!  And you’re wrong to respect him!” he shouted.  He glared at his father and turned to his wife.  “He’s a sick old man.”  Jenny was crying now, standing between the two of them, holding her hands gently to her swollen stomach.

            “You’ve blocked yourself off from your parents because you’re mother’s dying and you can’t understand your father’s gift.”  She spoke pleadingly, but Pearce’s tone didn’t soften.

            “I haven’t blocked myself from anything because there’s nothing there.”

            Pearce left – slammed the door and took off marching down the dusty road.  Jenny was sobbing in Jack’s arms.

            “Pearce and I don’t need to see eye to eye, Jenny.  We’re very different people.”  Jenny burst out angrily:

            “He’s your son!”

            “He just won’t understand – he doesn’t work that way.”  Jack knew how his son felt, how his son’s hostility wasn’t blatant disrespect – it was distrust in the way Jack lived and grief for Bethany.

            “He won’t come back, you know?” said Jenny timidly.  Jack nodded understanding.

            “It’s his decision.  I can’t make him”

            Jack remembered how he’d let the paintbrush hover tensely above the canvas before he set it down softly, dragging it downwards, flesh flowing behind it.  The pain of the world around him faded.  He remembered how the girl’s hair would tumble over her shoulders – her arms tapered into shadows – her legs shining against the rough wood – how she curved and the shadows pooled against her, moulding.  Jack always painted like this through the night and the prairie girl felt profoundly involved as if this sort of thing only happened in romantic lore.  She felt slightly ashamed as the cool air unashamedly caressed her body. 

            Since then Jack had hardened.  His wife had died; he had barely seen his son and his family; smoking had caught up with him.  And now he was here.  And the only thing that made it bearable was that his granddaughter didn’t know.  She softened him up.  She was young; she was vibrant; she was beautiful; she was innocent; she had never felt grief.  Jack didn’t get to see her often, couldn’t say he was very much involved with her life, but her few visits to the hospital this month were precious.  Suddenly she was elevated to the status of a healing goddess.  And all because she was ignorant. 

            Pearce and Jenny brought Rosemary over late in the afternoon and she showed him her artwork one crayon-filled sheet at a time – a spotted dog, a stick family, “grampa,” and a rainbow.  Jack looked lovingly at his granddaughter.  Rosemary talked to him in her cute baby voice for a while and then went to the corner to play with her doll.

            “Hey, Rosie-girl,” he called.  “Come over here by grandpa for a second.”  Rosie dragged her doll behind her.  Jenny lifted her gently onto the bed.  “What’s your doll’s name?” he asked.  Rosie looked intently at her doll.

            “She says her name is Sandra,” she piped back.

Jenny put her hand over Jack’s. 

            “That’s a beautiful name,” he said.

            “Mommy says you’ll paint Sandra a daisy.”  Jack looked at Jenny curiously.

            “I don’t think I’m allowed to paint in here, Rosie – ”  But Jenny interrupted.

            “The nurses will let you paint in the garden,” she said.  “We’ve set up an easel.”  Jack looked around the room.  Pearce looked at his daughter.

            “Rosie always asks us to see some of your paintings,” he said.  “Can you paint her some flowers?”

            Jenny set up the easel while Rosemary started playing in the flowerbeds.  Pearce sat stiffly on a garden bench. 

            “This place isn’t so bad,” he said.  Jack looked over at him.

            “You don’t have that plastic shackle over your wrist, do you?”  Pearce didn’t reply but Jack felt the coldness breaking down.  He laid out the brushes on a wooden crate and propped up the canvas in front of the flowerbeds.  Daffodils with yellow proboscises, roses, spiralled and crumpled, irises delicate and stained – Spring flowers.  And Jack painted them.

            When Jack was done, Rosie stretched out her soft arms, presenting him with a messy bouquet.  Some of the flowers still had roots – dirty split ends dangling in the breeze.  Jack bent down to sniff the flowers, smiling when his face got close to his granddaughter’s. 

            “Are these for me?” he asked.  Rosie nodded.

            “Flowers for grampa!” she said with triumphant childishness.  Jack took the flowers in his hands looking at the wild and colourful collection.  Flowers for his funeral – all this beauty collected in innocence and the most precious flower of all – little Rosie.