The Universe Versus Alex Woods (34 page)

‘Fuck, Woods!’ Ellie groaned. ‘What time do you call this?’

I looked at my watch, then realized it was almost certainly a rhetorical question. ‘I thought you’d be up,’ I apologized.

‘I don’t get up on Sundays.’

‘Oh.’

‘What do you want?’

‘Nothing. I was just on my way to the hospital and—’

‘I can’t give you a lift. I don’t have the car. I’d have thought your super-size brain would’ve grasped that. If it’s with your mother, it can’t be with me.’

‘Yes, I realize that. That’s not what I meant. I’m getting the bus, but I thought first—’

‘Woods, for God’s sake! I’m freezing my arse off here!’

‘Yes, I can see that. Perhaps it’d be better if I came back some other—’

‘If you want to come in, come in.’

‘I don’t want to disturb you if you’re not up.’

Before I’d got halfway through this sentence, Ellie was already heading back through the kitchen towards the living room. ‘You’ve already disturbed me, you moron. I’d hate for it to have been for nothing. Close the door behind you. It’s got to be about minus thirty out there.’

It was November. I estimated the actual temperature to be around eight or nine degrees Celsius. But I didn’t think it was worth bringing this up. I came in, took off my shoes and closed the door.

Although I’d been to the flat several times since Ellie had moved in, over a year ago, this must have been the first time I’d been there without my mother, and under these new circumstances, it made quite a different impression on me. Most of the furnishings were the same, of course, but nevertheless, the general atmosphere had changed to a significant degree. Essentially, it had taken on many of the characteristics of its tenant. It was clean enough, but dark, and rather untidy in places. The curtains were closed, the washing-up was dangerously over-stacked, and there was underwear everywhere. As far as I could see, it was hanging on every radiator in every room, though Ellie assured me that this was not a permanent feature of the décor. It just happened to be ‘washing day’. But as you can probably imagine, it was still disconcerting from the visitor’s point of view. There was simply nowhere you could place your gaze without there being all this black bunting hovering in your peripheral vision.

As for the other changes to the flat, the main one I noticed was that the box room now appeared to be a kind of walk-in wardrobe – though the term might be a little too grand, really. I suppose ‘boot closet’ would be nearer the mark.

‘You know, I used to
live
in that room,’ I told Ellie once we were sitting in the living room, amidst a landslide of CD cases and used coffee cups. ‘The box room, I mean. I lived there for a whole year.’

Ellie wrinkled her nose. ‘Which room?’

‘The box room,’ I repeated, gesturing back through the door.

‘The
cupboard
?’

‘It used to be a study,’ I clarified. ‘Then it was my bedroom for a year when my mother and I were living here.’

‘Jesus, Woods! It’s a fucking cupboard!’

‘I was only eleven at the time, so it wasn’t that bad. My mother wasn’t too crazy about the idea, but we didn’t have much choice. That was when I couldn’t go to school. I couldn’t leave the house. My epilepsy was too severe.’

Ellie shook her head. ‘Your life is like some kind of fucked-up fairy tale. You should write your biography. It’d be a hoot.’

‘Autobiography,’ I corrected.

‘What?’

‘A biography is when you write someone else’s story. When you write your own, it’s called an
auto
biography.’

‘Fuck you. Do you want a drink?’

‘Do you have any Diet Coke?’

‘I have some cheap cola in the fridge. Is that good enough?’

‘It depends. Does it have sugar in?’

‘Yes, it has sugar in.’

‘It’s okay – I’ll get some Diet Coke from downstairs. I can drink generic cola if I have to, but not with sugar. It sends me funny.’

‘You’re already funny.’

I didn’t know what to say to this, so I said nothing and went downstairs to retrieve a bottle of Diet Coke from my cache in the stockroom.

When I got back, Ellie hadn’t put on any more clothes, but she had cleared some space on the table for my drink and muted the television, which was tuned to one of those trashy music shows where the female performers are always bending and wriggling and the male performers are always grabbing their balls and karate-chopping the camera. Most music videos are made in such a way that even an orang-utan would understand what’s going on. Anyway, I don’t think Ellie was really watching it to begin with – my understanding was that this was not the kind of music she was into. She was, however, the kind of person who needed a lot of ‘stuff’ going on in the background in order to function properly. That’s probably why she’d lowered the volume rather than turning the television off. It was another minor distraction for me to contend with, alongside the underwear; and this, combined with the short interruption, made it difficult to dive straight into what I really wanted to talk about. I opted instead to resume the ‘small talk’, thinking that this would provide an easier approach.

‘Interestingly,’ I remarked, ‘a standard two-litre bottle of cola has about seventy-five teaspoons of sugar in.’

Ellie gave me a look as if I’d just told her that I had webbed feet.

‘That’s about the same as an iced chocolate cake eight inches in diameter,’ I added.

‘Yes, Woods, that really is the most fascinating thing I’ve heard all day.’

‘I was just trying to be conversational,’ I said.

‘You need a lot more practice. Let’s just cut to the chase, shall we? How’s your friend? Is he still crazy?’

Sometimes, in her own way, Ellie was really quite sharp.

I spent the next ten minutes explaining how Mr Peterson wasn’t exactly ‘crazy’ – not in the normal sense – but he
was
still suicidal. And for as long as this was the case, there was no chance he’d be allowed to leave the psychiatric ward.

‘So maybe it’s best if he stays there,’ Ellie concluded. ‘Is that what you think?’

‘No, not really,’ I said. ‘I mean, maybe for now, but not in the long term.’

‘At least at the hospital he’s got people looking after him.’

‘He doesn’t see it that way.’

Ellie shrugged. ‘How do
you
see it?’

‘I don’t know,’ I replied. ‘It’s all very muddled in my head. It’s like things are trying to pull into focus but they’re not quite able to. But I think . . . Well, I don’t see things now as I did a week ago. Everything’s a lot more complicated . . .’

I trailed off and had to think for some time before resuming. ‘Ellie, I’ve never told anyone this, but you know when I was in my coma for two weeks? After the meteor?’

I thought she was bound to make some comment about this, but she didn’t. She just nodded and lit a cigarette.

‘Well,’ I continued, ‘I’m glad I woke up – obviously – but, at the same time, I’ve often found myself thinking that it wouldn’t have mattered if I hadn’t. It wouldn’t have made any difference. Not to me anyway. Do you understand what I mean?’

‘No,’ Ellie said.

I thought some more.

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘So what I mean is that when I was in my coma, there wasn’t anything bad. Actually, there wasn’t anything at all. There wasn’t dreaming. There wasn’t darkness. There wasn’t even time. As far as I’m concerned, those two weeks simply don’t exist. They didn’t happen. And I think it’s exactly the same thing with death. Death isn’t anything either. It’s not even a void – not for the person it happens to. Do you understand that?’

Ellie exhaled a long jet of smoke, then said: ‘When you’re dead, you’re dead. I mean, it’s a bit depressing for a Sunday morning, but that’s what you’re trying to say, right?’

‘Yes, that’s right. When you’re dead, you’re dead. That’s what I believe and that’s what Mr Peterson believes too. But the point is, if that’s true, it
shouldn’t
be depressing. And it certainly shouldn’t be scary. I mean, I can see why it should be scary from an evolutionary standpoint, obviously, but not from a logical standpoint.’

‘Jesus, Woods! It is scary, it isn’t scary . . . I did
not
sign up for this when I opened the door. Do me a favour: spare me the mind-fuck and just tell me what you’re trying to say in plain English.’

‘I’m saying that death is the easiest thing in the world. It’s only dying that’s terrible.’

Ellie grimaced and rubbed her head.

‘Okay. Forget that. The point I’m trying to make is this: for ages I just couldn’t stop dwelling on the fact that Mr Peterson was going to die, but now . . . Well, now something’s changed. It no longer seems like the most important thing in all this. You can die well or you can die badly, but death’s just death.’

Ellie blinked at me for a few moments.

‘I don’t want Mr Peterson to die badly,’ I concluded.

‘You mean you don’t want him to die in the mental ward?’

‘Yes, that’s part of it. I mean we don’t know how long he’s got left. It could be several more years. But I don’t think he should have to spend more of that in hospital than is absolutely necessary.’

Ellie didn’t say anything. I spent some time staring off towards the unopened curtains, then realized that it probably looked like I was staring at her underwear, which was festooned all along the radiator below. I snapped my eyes back to her face.

‘He told me that you went back to see him in the hospital,’ I said. ‘You know, the other day, when I was waiting in the car. Well, actually, he said you went back to shout at him.’

‘Yeah, about that: I know he’s your friend and everything, and you probably think it was really terrible of me to act that way with a dying man, but, well, I couldn’t really help it. He was just being such a
pain
.’

‘Yes, I know. And I know what you were trying to do. Thank you. I think it helped.’

Ellie didn’t blush exactly – Ellie
never
blushed – but I noticed that she did look away and start fidgeting with her cigarette lighter. I got the impression that if I’d been sitting within easy striking distance, she would have punched me.

‘You know, Woods,’ she said after a while. ‘In a way – a very odd way – what with how Rowena’s been with me and everything . . . well, you’re kind of like a brother to me. A very weird, socially retarded brother, obviously, but a brother all the same. That’s kind of how I have to think of you.’

I didn’t say anything.

‘What I mean is that you usually annoy the hell out of me, and most of the time I can’t even begin to figure out what’s going on in that very bizarre place you call your brain, but still, despite all that, it doesn’t mean I don’t feel like I shouldn’t be looking out for you when stuff like this comes up.’

It took some time to sift that last sentence for compliments. I was almost certain that she’d been trying to say something nice, and that she was expecting me to say something nice in return, but before I could start to think about what that something might be, she’d already got bored and turned back to the television.

‘Ellie,’ I said eventually.

‘Yes?’

‘I like your bangs.’

This was the best I could come up with under the circumstances.

That night, I wrote down the facts, which were these:

1) Mr Peterson doesn’t want to die
right now
.

2) But he does think there will come a time when he will no longer want to live.

3) The problem is that when this time comes, he might not be physically capable of acting on his wishes.

4) This is why he attempted to kill himself, and why he will continue to be a danger to himself if released from the hospital.

5) He is not depressed. He is thinking clearly.

6) He said, in his note, that he wanted to die peacefully and with dignity, which is probably true of everyone.

7) But he has already proven that this is no simple matter. Suicide is neither peaceful nor dignified. It is unreliable and messy.

I looked at these facts for some time, and eventually added an eighth:

8) He wants the right to choose for himself.

Then, after some more time, I crossed out fact eight and rewrote it as follows:

8) He should have the right to choose for himself.

That was the second hardest thing I’ve ever had to write.

It was another three or four days before I discussed ‘the facts’ with Mr Peterson. I had to accept and internalize them first, so that I could be one hundred per cent prepared for the conversation to come. I knew that there was no room for doubt any more. My arguments had to be airtight, and delivered with absolute conviction. That was the only way I could proceed.

I chose a moment when the ward was quiet, when we were least likely to be disturbed, and I kept my voice low so that neither Count Tolstoy nor the Catatonic would be able to hear what was said.

I started by telling Mr Peterson that I had a few things I needed to say, and that he should only interrupt me if anything I said seemed incorrect to him. Then I set out the facts, one to seven, pretty much as I set them out for you: same words, same order, altering only the pronouns. It was here that all my preparation paid off. I was able to speak calmly and clearly throughout, with no stumbles and no hesitation. I knew that in this instance, emotion would not be my ally. For what was to follow, I needed Mr Peterson to understand that each and every point was clear in my mind.

He didn’t interrupt me once; I didn’t expect him to. I knew the moment at which he’d start talking. It would be after I’d delivered point eight:
You should have the right to choose for yourself.
To which I added a coda:

‘And whatever that choice is, I want to support you in it. If the time comes when you no longer want to live – when that time comes, I want to help you die.’

Now, I’d hate for you to think badly of Mr Peterson. Rest assured: he made every attempt to put this idea in the ground there and then. My suggestion horrified him – as I’d known it would. But this was a fight he was never going to win. The facts were already agreed, and incontrovertible. He needed my help. And when it came to arguing the point, I’d had time to rehearse; he had not.