The Missouri Review

Richard Branton Richard Branton lives in Columbia, Missouri, where he is working on a novel. This is his first fiction publication. The Death of Cardinal Newman AT FOURTEEN, Sebastian Blessing has already decided to be a porno XX. movie maker when he grows up. But he doesn't tell people that. Instead, he tells them he would like to play bassoon in the philharmonic orchestra. His mother smiles and tells her friends that he certainly does have an extraordinary aptitude for music. Now that school is out for the summer, he spends more time thanusual practicing thebassoon, partly to disquise the fact that he is making his first porno film with Candice, the twelve-year-old across the street, and partly to pass the time while he sits with his father who is dying. His mother tells him, "Sebastian, do try to spend as much time as possible with your father. That's all we can do for him now." Or, at other times, "We must continue as usual. Life goes on in spite of things." So, Sebastian does his best to spend more time with his father and to continue as usual. Each morning he takes his camera across the street to work on his film, and each afternoon he takes his bassoon to his father's bedroom and plays. His father lies there propped up with pillows and stares absently at a point to the left and up; occasionaUy he slides his gaze downward to Sebastian and then away toward the window with its view of the back yard. Sebastian moves the heavy concrete birdbath from the front yard to the back, where it can be seen from his father's window. As he plays, they pass the long hours of the afternoon watching the birds splash in the water and then hop out to sit dripping and ruffle-feathered on the rim of the bowl, before flying unsteadily up to preen themselves in Mrs. Pfeiffer's maple tree. Other than this new visual orientation, Sebastian's father remains much as he has been for the past three weeks — silent, unmoving, passively wetting the diaper Sebastian's mother thought would be more comfortable than wet pajamas, obediently sipping water from a flexible straw when Sebastian takes a break from the bassoon — except on the day a tremor passes over his body, agitating his fingers and eyes. Sebastian thinks his father mightbe taking a turn for the worse, until he notices the Decamerons' large, yellow cat crouched nervously on the lawn with its paws kneading the grass and its inflated tail snapping from side to side. The cat's eyes are locked on a bathing cardinal; the one Sebastian's father, in his fondness for naming the neighborhood birds, calls Cardinal Newman. Sebastian carefully places his bassoon on his chair and runs from the room, through the carpeted silence of the house, to pull open the top half of the Dutch door that leads from the breakfast room to the patio, and, with the slingshot snatched from its hiding place behind the micro-wave Richard Branton The Missouri Review ¦ 269 oven and abutterscotchball from the candy dish on the table, fire a poorly aimed but colorful interdiction at the startled cat. When he returns to his father's room, the only sign of the crisis is a freshly wet diaper. His father's eyes are calm and his hands quiet as Sebastian again takes up the bassoon. Sebastian's mother returns late in the afternoon and tiptoes noisily along the haUway to peer into the room. Sebastion has stopped playing and idly fingers the keys of his bassoon as he stares at his father who is gazing out the window to where a blue jay stirs up a mist to form its own personal rainbow in the setting sun. He knows his mother is there but waits for her whispered summons before he turns his head and then gets up to follow her beckoning hand from the room. "Well, and how was your afternoon?" she asks with a cheerfulness that is contradicted by the sadness of her eyes. "It was okay, but we need to change the diaper." His...