The Good Son

James Rogers never cried at his mother’s death. But he did feel guilty for not being there when she passed. Everyone else was there, in the old people’s home, by her bed. His sister, his brother, his nieces and nephews, all his mum’s friends. But James wasn’t there. He was with Cash Driveway, too stoned to even contemplate death, let alone actively surround himself with it.

James was thirty-five years old, tall, thin and usually didn’t smoke a lot of marijuana, but he did that day, and he got way too stoned. Anyone who says, ‘Well, I don’t care how stoned I was, if my mother was on her death bed, I would be there’ has clearly never stood around in a kitchen smoking ‘Mullumbimby Madness’ with Cash Driveway. Cash Driveway is a lovely man of about fifty with grey hair that is balding in the middle but active on the sides so that sometimes he looks like Einstein or a koala. And he has an uncanny ability to make people embark on noble but foolish quests. If Cash was a literary creation, he would be the Man of La Mancha, but way more out of it, bravely yet awkwardly tilting at windmills. Cash’s suggestion on that day was that the two of them try to smoke themselves straight. He had a theory that if you smoked enough joints you could go full circle, from straight to extremely stoned and then somehow back to being clear-headed and capable. There were certainly flaws in the plan.

Cash Driveway is not manipulative or evil; he is a good man who just has too many questions and his search for answers is extremely infectious. Cash Driveway is an enigma. No one knows where he is from or exactly how old he is; there is very little information available about him. In fact, one of the only things that is known for sure about Cash Driveway is that his name isn’t Cash Driveway.

But this story isn’t about smoking dope or Cash Driveway.

It’s about when to hold on and when to let go. It’s about falling in love. It’s about impulsive journeys to Byron Bay. But mostly, it’s about James Rogers, the beautiful Sophie Glass and an amazing 76-year-old woman called Tamara Higginson.

And I very much hope you enjoy it.

The morning of Cash Driveway’s failed experiment, James Rogers had been doing what he usually did. He had got up early and gone to his job cleaning a cinema in St Kilda. Like most cinemas these days it was criminally underused, which made it very easy to clean, which made this a good job. It usually took James about two hours, it paid well, and it also came with free entry to any movie, any time. While James had never aspired to being a cleaner, his deep love of cinema and his hatred of being broke made this one of the best jobs he had ever had. Sadly the cinema, the majestically named ‘Majestic’, was haunted by the constant threat of being shut down. It seemed that people would rather watch a film on their iPhone than go through the agony of sitting down in a comfortable chair and watching one in a building designed and built for that very purpose.

By ten that morning James was done with work and was riding his bike through the lovely streets of St Kilda, enjoying the views of the water and the early summer sun. Most of the people James knew lived in the area: a mix of artists, bartenders, writers, ‘people of the night’ and part-time university professors. The kind of folk who find having a glass of wine and then going out for breakfast very doable. The kind of people who don’t have any need for shoe polish, ironing boards or rowing machines.

Once a week or so, James would drop in on his old fine-art tutor Cash Driveway. As James had no commitments for the rest of the day, he texted Cash and five minutes later was chaining his bike up in Cash Driveway’s driveway. Cash was pretty much the only person James ever smoked dope with, but this had more to do with Cash’s magnetic personality and his interest in social experiments than it did with any real desire on James’ part to get wasted. If Cash Driveway had influence over James’ actions, he was blissfully unaware of it and, as we have already decided that Cash is a good man and that any negative judgement from us would only muddy what are already slightly cloudy waters, I think we can safely move on.

About ten minutes into Operation Get Too Stoned, James Rogers received a text message. Or rather, he didn’t. His phone received a text message from his sister, Claudia, telling him to get to the Peggy Day Aged Care Home immediately as their mother was close to death and this would be his last chance to see her. Fortunately James didn’t see the message for some time. I say ‘fortunately’ because by now James was already extremely stoned, and dealing with the death of a loved one when you’ve been hanging out in Cash Driveway’s kitchen could send one down quite a rabbit hole.

Considering that I told you this story wasn’t about smoking dope or Cash Driveway, you may be beginning to lose faith in me as an honest narrator. Please don’t. Cash Driveway and pot smoking are merely the literary equivalent of appetisers before we commence the all-you-can-eat banquet of this story.

Eventually James saw the text message from his sister and, with a sympathetic hug and three squares of rum-and-raisin chocolate from Cash Driveway, he jumped in a cab and raced to the Peggy Day Aged Care Home. He was, of course, too late, but the eternal optimist in him was saying, ‘It’s okay, she won’t have died yet.’ Meanwhile, the still slightly stoned and paranoid part of him was asking, ‘Is it perverse and selfish to hope that your mother doesn’t die until you are there to see it?’ It was one of those situations that sounds more gruesome than it is.

By the time James ran breathlessly up the ornate stairs and into the reception area of the home, his mother had been dead for exactly ninety-three minutes. He hoped that the number ninety-three was a number his mother liked but, as we all know, if you are looking for the upside in being ninety-three minutes late to anything, you are pretty much grasping at straws.

Claudia met him in the foyer. No one had to apologise – thankfully they were not that kind of family – they just hugged and thought about their mother and what she had been and was no more. Twenty-six years ago their father had died and now their mother was gone: they had no more parents to lose.

Claudia introduced James to a young woman who had been their mother’s carer in her last weeks. Her name was Sophie and she had a combination of dark hair and green eyes that James found almost impossible to look at. Her particular kind of beauty made him remember being in his early twenties. Beautiful people and beautiful heartbreak. Uncontrollable crying fits in cars out the front of beautiful houses that belonged to beautiful girls, both of which he had no doubt entered for the last time. And because Cash Driveway’s (again!) experiment had only partially worn off, James found himself questioning everything. Was it wrong to be attracted to someone while your mother lay dead nearby?

As Claudia had to go pick up her children from school, she gave her little brother a kiss on the forehead. She had done this ever since he was a baby and their parents had brought him home from the hospital. Claudia was three years older than James when they were growing up and, as far as James could tell, she was always going to be three years older than him. He liked having a big sister. The kisses on the forehead made him feel safe, and in that place, at that time, he wanted all the safe feelings that he could get.

After his sister had left, Sophie asked James if he wanted to see his mother. Suddenly it all seemed very real.

‘I don’t know. I mean, I appreciate the offer but I think I’ve left it a bit late, don’t you?’

‘No,’ said Sophie. ‘People find it helps.’

‘It helps? But she’s dead. I’m not a doctor but I can’t see anything I say or do really helping at this point.’

‘Not her. You. It may help you.’

And with that Sophie took James to see his mum.

Sophie led James down a hallway and into his mother’s room. There was a screen around the bed which gave James visions of racehorses, steeplechase and bad falls. Sophie asked James if he wanted her to stay and he said yes. She then pulled the screen open, stepped back and let James see his mother. She looked normal – not dead or alive, just old. Old and tired.

James sat down by his mother’s bed and took her hand. He then looked to Sophie. Sophie’s expression said, ‘What are you looking at me for? She’s your mother.’ (Quite a difficult thing to convey without using words.)

James began to speak, cautiously at first but then with a building confidence. He told his mother many things that he should have told her when she was alive and quite a few things he should never have told her, not even after she was dead. Nine of the things that he told his recently deceased mother were as follows:

1. You were right. When I was ten I did steal that $2 coin from under the front doormat. I spent it on lollies.

2. Going against your advice, I once tried to eat something that was bigger than my own head. I failed.

3. Munty the cat did not run away. I accidentally ran him over in the driveway.

4. I once found a vibrator in your bedside drawer. I was pleased and proud of you.

5. Robbo the gardener was not gay. Claudia and I paid him $100 per month to tell you that he was and we all maintained that illusion for twelve years. Hearing you tell your tennis ladies, ‘Well, Robbo, my gay gardener, says . . .’ was well worth the money.

6. When I was fourteen, Dad gave me this piece of advice: ‘Never make love to a lady if there is a shovel in the room.’ He refused to elaborate and to this day I spend large chunks of time wondering what he meant.

7. I hated the way you would say ‘six a.m. in the morning’. It’s either six a.m., or six in the morning. Saying six a.m. in the morning is ridiculous.

8. The day I had my appendix out was just laziness running amok. I had a history exam and I wanted to get out of school so I said I had a terrible tummy ache. The next thing I knew the doctor had me whizzed off to hospital and my perfectly healthy appendix was cut out. I still had to do the exam a few days later. It was really easy and I got a B+.

9. I loved and appreciated you far more than I ever let on.

Once he’d finished speaking, James sat by his mother’s bed for a minute and then started to feel a little extraneous. He had just wanted to say some things, and those things had been said. He got up, none of his guilt resolved, and turned to Sophie.

‘How was that?’

‘Well, I guess it was fine.’

‘Do you think she would have liked it? I mean, obviously the timing could have been better – but was it okay?’

Sophie led him from the room and said, ‘James, only you can know that. I liked the bit about pretending the gardener was gay, though. I think she would have loved that.’

‘Probably not. My mother didn’t really get jokes. My sister said that Mum had her sense of humour shot off in the war.’

‘War? What war was she in?’

‘No. That was a joke too. I think you and my mum must have got on famously.’

Sophie took the somewhat stunned James to the staff room and made him a cup of chamomile tea. He wanted normal tea (a term that Sophie took exception to) but they were out of normal so he got chamomile. She figured it would soothe him and open his mind to a less beveragist way of thinking.

As they drank their not-normal tea, James began to express remorse for not having been there when his mother had died. People who miss the death of a loved one often assume that everyone but them has done the right thing. That by not being there at the end, they are in a very small and selfish club populated by sociopaths and those on their way to hell. Sophie knew quite the opposite to be true: that most old people died alone. A lot of families came late or did not come at all. She also knew that telling James that would probably not cheer him up.

‘This sucks,’ sighed a defeated James.

‘Well, at the risk of sounding harsh, you are not the first person to have had this experience. You are not the first human to feel guilt.’

‘It’s not guilt . . . I don’t feel guilty.’

‘Okay then, shame. You are not the first person to feel shame.’

‘Your choice of words is getting worse. I feel neither of those things,’ said a clearly guilt-ridden and shame-filled James.

Sophie had seen it hundreds of times. Almost everyone who walked into the place a little late experienced what James was currently experiencing. The thing was, though, they all only went through it once. She, on the other hand, got to have her own little groundhog grief day with every one of them. Every time. She didn’t drink chamomile tea for the taste.

Explaining all of this to James, Sophie surprised herself: until that very moment she had never realised the toll that watching the same kind of suffering, over and over, was taking on her, and she was a little shocked that she was opening up about this to someone she had just met. Although she didn’t know it yet, one thing that both Sophie and James shared was their inability to sit on feelings or information. Some people pondered, thought about things for a long time, before giving them voice. Sophie and James were not those kinds of people. If they thought of something, they said it almost immediately. It was as though their thought patterns and speech were synced. That was the reason that they were both good at pub trivia. They made snap decisions and went with their guts. It was also the reason they were both single.

‘What do the others, the “hundreds of others”, what do they do about this feeling? Surely someone has worked out what to do,’ said James.

‘They do – nothing. They just get on with life.’

‘That’s not enough. I hate feeling this. You must hate going through it over and over. I want to do something to make it . . . Make it better. Is there some way out of this? You must have some answers? Or do you just make sad people weird cups of tea?’

Sophie got up and moved to the exit, as though she was about to leave. James was slightly taken aback that his calling chamomile tea ‘weird’ was enough to make her storm out of the room mid conversation. At her final step, though, she stopped and closed the door to the staff room, so that no one could see or hear them. She then returned to the table and her seat opposite James. She stared at him for a few seconds, trying to decide if he was worthy. In the end she looked deep into him and said:

‘Well, there is one thing we could try.’