Every Little Piece of Me

by Amy Jones

  Eventually, though, she went inside.

  It had been three months since she’d been home, and the apartment was cold. As she crossed the room to turn up the thermostat, she had the sense of something being disturbed, some quiet rest the room had been undertaking in her absence, the walls exhaling with the almost indecipherable sigh of a peaceful moment coming to an end. Too bad, Mags thought. You don’t get off the hook that easy. He was a part of you too.

  She opened the fridge, but there was nothing in it except a bottle of vinegar, a long-expired carton of milk, and a lump of something rotten that she realized was the remnants of an Asian pear Emiko had bought for her, back in the early days after Sam died, when Mags wasn’t capable of feeding herself. She’d kept herself holed up in the apartment for weeks, watching and rewatching all those ’70s gangster movies that Sam loved so much—Mean Streets, Get Carter, The Long Goodbye—and sitting out on the fire escape, smoking, crying to Johnny Cash, Kris Kristofferson, all Sam’s favourite music. Unable to deal with the silence, with the ghosts in the shadows.

  “You need to move,” Emiko had said, dropping off a bag of groceries—a strange assortment of rare fruit, dried pasta, and candy bars that made Mags question if Emiko had ever bought groceries before in her life. Mags knew she was right, but the thought of going to see apartments by herself, signing a new lease by herself, moving all her things to a new place by herself—it was too overwhelming, too exhausting. And then they left on the tour, and she didn’t have to think about her apartment, or think about all the memories of Sam contained within these four walls. Until now.

  She sat down at the table, letting the deep silence settle around her. From the other room, she could hear the ticking of the clock that Sam had bought at a flea market that time they rented a car and drove out to Prince Edward County to see what all the fuss was about. Sam with his bare feet on the dashboard, pointing out each cow he saw, making her pull over at every antique store, every fruit stand. At first, she tried to push the memory away, the pain almost unbearable. But then she realized: she wanted it. She wanted the grief back. Not the tight, steel ball of grief, teeth-grinding and nauseating, that the pills compacted her pain into, but the hot, sticky, uninhibited grief that came with the drinking. She wanted to swim in her grief. She wanted to crack her grief against the wall and watch it trickle down to the floor, she wanted it to flood the entire world, she wanted it to swallow her whole.

  And so she began steadily drinking her way through the liquor cupboard.

  Later she remembered some parts: singing all her favourite songs at the top of her lungs, standing on the fire escape smoking cigarette after cigarette, asking a passerby if they could get her some coke, throwing snowballs at the bus when it stopped at the corner to let passengers out. She put on her best dress. She fell in the bathroom and thought she might have chipped her tooth. Then she was up on her feet again, and maybe she was even dancing. She was pressed up against the window, kissing it, the glass cold and metallic against her tongue. She was on the bed, jumping. She knocked over a lamp, then challenged it to a pillow fight. She finally cried when she ripped her best dress while trying to take it off, ripped it all the way down the side. She sat naked on the floor and wailed, cradling the dress in her arms before throwing it across the room. She punched the floor and her hand was numb, maybe even broken. She was going to find a bar, and she was going to start a fight. She was going to find someone and fuck their brains out, she was going to find a perfect marriage to rip apart. She was going down swinging. She was raging, she was raging.

  The only way she was going to make it through…

  The only way she was going to make it through this night…

  The only way she was going to make it through this night was to…

  She was not going to make it through this night.

  * * *

  She felt something moving underneath her. At first, because she was dreaming of a forest, dark green and misty, she thought it was a wild animal burying itself beneath her. But then consciousness broke through in jumbled bursts, and she was vaguely aware that she was not in a forest and that the thing moving underneath her was someone’s hands, and then those hands were pulling her, dragging her someplace. In a moment of sheer feral panic, Mags began to thrash, some bare resemblance to instinct kicking in and making her fight. But her legs were entirely limp and her arms felt like dead weights, and when she tried to speak she found that her mouth was somehow cemented shut. It was so much easier to stop fighting, to let those hands pull her to wherever they wanted. It didn’t matter anyway, because she didn’t know where she was. Her eyes tried to focus, and as she moved through the liquid space, objects drifting in and out of her fuzzy vision, she began to recognize things: her shoes in the closet, her couch, her giant living room window with the old-fashioned sash, the warp and woof of her hardwood floor. Everything was upside down, but in a way that made sense to her, as if it should have been overturned all along.

  She cracked apart her lips and forced her gluey mouth to open, her parched tongue limp against the inside of her cheek. She managed to croak out one word—“Sam”—and then everything began to fade away. She tried to wiggle her fingers and toes, struggling for consciousness, but she was too tired to fight. The darkness won.

  Shannon Duncan

  @shann0ndee

  I am happy to report that Align Above are as incredible live as everyone says. If you can get tix for tomorrow night’s show, Toronto, DO IT #alignaboveatmercerhall

  11:54 PM – 19 Feb 2015

  22 Retweets 113 Likes

  Talisha @teebot45 47 min

  Replying to @shann0ndee

  Such a great show! I was kinda bummed Mags didn’t throw an amp into the crowd or anything, tho

  Shannon Duncan @shann0ndee 23 min

  Replying to @teebot45

  She WAS bawling by the end

  Talisha @teebot45 21 min

  Replying to @shann0ndee

  She does that every night! I was hoping for something more dramatic lol

  Alba Noe @superkittyxx 17 min

  Replying to @teebot45 @shann0ndee

  Did you catch when Zac had to pick her up off the floor behind the drum kit after “Serendipity”? She just dropped, wouldn’t get back up #alignaboveatmercerhall

  Talisha @teebot45 21 min

  Replying to @superkittyxx @shann0ndee

  Damn I missed that!!!! I hope someone got pics

  Ava

  February 2015

  AMTHGF S01:

  Hiatus

  When Ava was little, she thought that “morning sickness” was “mourning sickness.” To her, there was something funereal about being pregnant, and it seemed appropriate that a woman’s body would mourn for the days when it had been free of parasitic life forms. As she got older and understood that the sickness happened in the morning, she secretly still thought of it as grief—albeit the kind that manifested itself in hourly visits to the ladies’ room to ralph in the toilet.

  Now, as Ava sat on the edge of the bathtub, a garbage can between her knees, a thin thread of vomit unspooling over her lip as she stared at the little plus sign on the pee stick, she still wasn’t convinced her first instinct was wrong.

  When that plus sign first appeared, she had tried to break the stick in half. But the plastic stick, rigid and pee-slick, had instead flown out of her hands and across the room, landing behind the radiator. She got down on her hands and knees and probed the cobwebby depths, trying to retrieve it, wondering why no one had ever created an easily snappable pregnancy test for women who didn’t want to be pregnant. Surely there was a market for it. Surely there were other women out there for whom snapping that stick would be, if not wholly satisfying, a nice diversion from having to think about the mess they were in.

  But even covered in dirt and dust, the plus sign was still there. In her head she counted backward—it had been six weeks since she had last been with Antonio. After filming for the first season of AMTHGF had
ended, he and Molly and Micah had gone to Acapulco for a holiday while Ava stayed home obsessively checking Molly’s Instagram feed and working her way through the crate of gelato he had given her as a Christmas present. “You know, I can get gelato now any time I want,” she said when he gave it to her, and he’d looked so crushed that she’d fucked him right there on the living room couch, even though Val was due home any minute. She regretted it later, as she scrolled past picture after picture of his lean, beautiful, tanned body stretched out across white sand, or his charmingly gap-toothed smile squished up next to Molly’s gummy one in a selfie in front of the ocean. Remembering how she had promised herself, after that night in the alley, that she wouldn’t let it happen again. And, of course, she really regretted it now, as her stomach heaved one more time, the last of the gelato forcing itself up her esophagus.

  “Ava?” Val’s voice came through the door. “Are you okay?”

  Ava lifted her head. “Go away.”

  But she hadn’t locked the door. He made a face as soon as he saw her, before backing away from the smell. “The toilet is right there.”

  “Too far.” Ava shifted over on the edge of the tub, using one butt cheek to cover the pregnancy test.

  “What did you even get up to last night?” Ava didn’t answer. “I thought you only went out for the cameras. We’re not even filming right now.”

  “Maybe I’m learning to like the celebrity lifestyle.” She pulled the garbage can to her chest. “Don’t I look glamorous?”

  “Like the next cover of Vogue.” He paused, then pulled out his vape from his pocket. “Want some of this? It might make you feel better.”

  Ava’s stomach lurched. “No, thank you.”

  Val shrugged, bringing the vape to his lips. “Fine, more for me,” he said.

  Ava watched him from over the rim of the garbage can, wondering when he had become such a pothead. She couldn’t remember him ever smoking before they came to New York. But there was a lot she hadn’t known about her brother back then. The hard edge he had now, hidden behind his bloodshot eyes—had it always been there? Was it just the closeness of the cameras now that made it easier to see?

  Exhaling, Val pulled his shirt up over the lower half of his face. “Seriously, what died in there?”

  “Only my dignity.” She spat into the can, trying to avoid his eyes. She could tell he didn’t believe her. For a brief moment, she considered telling him everything. But the thought of how far back she would have to go, all the explanations she would have to give him, all the questions he would inevitably ask—it was too much. She just wanted to be left alone with her garbage can and her pee stick. Her stomach came to her rescue, hurling up a stream of what at this point could only be pure bile.

  “Okay, I’m out,” said Val, closing the door. “Text me if you need anything,” he added from the other side.

  “Will do,” Ava said weakly. But unless he had a time machine, there was no way he could help her.

  * * *

  Ava knew she was lucky not to have the cameras on her as she floated through her days in a confused stupor. But she also hadn’t seen Antonio since he’d come back from Acapulco, and they had to talk about this.

  She convinced him to meet her at a ramen place she liked in SoHo, dim and random enough that she could usually get away with not being recognized. Still, she wore the blonde wig, the one that reminded her of the hair she had before. Part of her hoped it would remind Antonio too—of a time when things were easy between them, when the two of them would joke and flirt, when everything was pure possibility.

  “I’ve forgotten how to eat soup with long hair,” she joked as loose strands trailed in the broth, then immediately regretted it as Antonio sighed, twirling his chopsticks in the noodles. She felt stupid, pathetic, desperate. It hadn’t even been that long since she’d seen him, but something had changed. She didn’t know how to be around him anymore.

  All this will change, she thought. When we have a family.

  But Antonio was nervous, vigilant. He couldn’t keep from looking around the room. “Why are we here?” he asked. “We shouldn’t be seen in public together.”

  “Don’t worry, it’s fine. Producers have dinner with their stars all the time. No one knows about…” She trailed off, not knowing how to finish the sentence. “I missed you,” she said instead.

  Antonio speared a piece of pork with one chopstick. “I missed you too,” he said before putting it in his mouth.

  Watching him chew, Ava’s stomach churned, but she ladled a spoonful of broth anyway. “It’s funny, I’m actually kind of looking forward to doing the show again. It’s been strange without all the cameras around. Like I don’t know what to do with myself.” She brought the spoon to her lips and sipped delicately, hoping the soup would stay down.

  “Yeah, it will be good.” Antonio put down his chopsticks, shifting uncomfortably in his seat. “Listen, Ava, assuming the show gets renewed, I’ve asked Bob and Tess for a more supervisory role going forward. Javier’s ready to take over some of the more hands-on stuff.”

  “But you love the hands-on stuff.” Ava’s heart fluttered. “What are you going to do instead?”

  “I need to spend more time with my family. I just…”

  My family. “This is because of Molly, isn’t it?” Ava could hear her voice getting louder, but she didn’t know how to contain it. My family. “She’s making you do this. She’s trying to control you, control your life.”

  “Shhh.” He briefly touched her hand, then pulled away quickly, sighing once more. “This is why I didn’t want to do this in public.”

  “But we never do anything in public! We never do anything like a normal couple.”

  “We are not a couple!” He leaned forward, forcing her to meet his gaze. “It wasn’t Molly’s idea, okay? It was mine. It has to stop. This,” he motioned between the two of them, “has to stop.”

  All the blood in Ava’s body rushed to her ears, a giant wave breaking over her head. She let it crash over her, then sat back in her seat, feeling winded. She had known it was coming. Of course she had known. She suddenly felt so sorry for that girl of five minutes ago who thought she could change things. And yet, even now, all she could think about was what she could say to make him stay.

  She straightened her napkin, adjusted her bowl, then folded her hands in her lap.

  Staring at him—those deep brown eyes, those dark eyebrows ridging his heavy brow—she suddenly realized how easily, in that moment, she could completely ruin his life. But that wasn’t what she wanted. What she wanted, she knew, was impossible—the words my family dissolving any image she might have had in her head of their family.

  She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and proceeded to vomit all over the table.

  Before they stepped out of the restaurant—Ava pale as a ghost, Antonio possibly even paler—she knew the paparazzi were there, like they were every time she didn’t want them to be.

  “Ava!”

  “Are you sick, Ava?”

  “Did you get food poisoning?”

  Antonio walked ahead of her, pushing through the cameras to get to the cab waiting by the curb, but he didn’t touch her, didn’t help her. Ava felt a twinge of sadness, thinking back to that night at the hospital, how he had carried her in his arms through the crowd. Everything was still ahead of them, then, the two of them hovering on the precipice of so many possible outcomes.

  She climbed into the backseat of the cab, the cameras trying to reach in the door as Antonio climbed in after her.

  “Got a hangover, Ava?”

  “Ava, are you pregnant?”

  As the cab sped off, Antonio turned to her. “You’re not, are you?”

  Ava let her head fall against the window. So many possible outcomes. And yet, really, there had only ever been one.

  “Of course not,” she said.

  * * *

  —

  That night, she sat in her room watching old Home footage on her lapt
op. Her in the kitchen of Hart’s Desire, describing the process of making boxed macaroni and cheese as though she were on a cooking show. “I’m using two litres of locally sourced Gin Harbour tap water here, to enhance the delicacy of the dry pasta,” she said as she stirred the macaroni in the pot. “And I’ve seasoned it with a pinch of authentic Windsor table salt, mined in the ancient salt quarries of Windsor Table.” She pronounced the last part with a fake French accent, weendsoor tahblay.

  “Seriously?” she heard Antonio say off-screen.

  “It’s in the Salt District of Southern France.”

  It was the only televised conversation they’d ever had. When the footage first aired, Ava had been upset—the scene was so ridiculous that she hadn’t even bothered with any of her usual sabotage tricks, thinking it would never air. But now, watching herself on the screen, she wished there was more. She wished she had let him follow her with the camera everywhere, so she could see herself the way he saw her, through the lens—the way he lingered on her hands as she stirred the pasta in the pot, the way he caught her smile in the sunbeam of light coming in through the kitchen window. It was so intimate it was almost unbearable. No one had ever seen her the way Antonio had seen her.

  As she closed her laptop, loneliness engulfed her. Val was asleep in the next room, but it wasn’t Val she wanted. She pulled out her phone and typed a text, her face glowing in the light of the screen.

  Papa. I need you.

  She stared at the words for a long time. Then she deleted them.

  * * *

  It was another three days before she could get an appointment. Luckily for her, it was snowing that Monday and there were no paparazzi outside the building, no fans rushing up to her outside the clinic to tell her how much they loved her. Still, she wore the brown wig this time, tied back under the hood of her plain black parka, a scarf pulled up around her nose.