Every Little Piece of Me Page 22

  But still. You had to keep trying. She took Sam’s hand and led him away from the shore toward the dunes, pulling him down into the sand.

  * * *

  They had only been back in Toronto for three days before Sam was hospitalized again. Even as she drove him there, Mags knew this time it would be for good.

  At first, people had come to see him: Paul and Zac, a distant cousin on his father’s side, the owner of a club where Align Above frequently played. They brought cards and flowers and beamed healthy smiles, they smelled of the outside and brightness and life. His parents called every day from Rome or Caracas or Ubud or wherever in the world they happened to be, but they didn’t come home. Once every few days, Emiko would bring food for Mags and they’d eat in the family lounge—a room with couches and a television and an ancient ping-pong table, a room designed to be comforting but that only reminded you that you were in a hospital, with its outdated magazines, the bottles of hand sani, the fake flowers. And then Emiko would leave without even so much as a glance toward Sam’s room. But after Sam started slipping in and out of lucidity, after they induced the morphine coma and the business of dying began for real, people stopped coming. The nurses made a cot for Mags next to Sam’s bed, although most nights she fell asleep in front of the television in the family lounge, not registering what she was watching, aware only of the flickering light.

  It was strange, waiting for death to come. Mags had always assumed it came swiftly, taking you by surprise. When the doctors had told Sam the cancer had spread and he wasn’t a candidate for another round of chemo, Mags had supposed that one day she would wake up and walk into his room with his morning tea and discover him gone, peacefully reclined against the pillows, a wispy soul fluttering to heaven on angel wings or some stupid thing. But the reality had been weeks of slow disintegration in palliative care, waiting as parts of Sam shut down one by one: his liver, his kidneys, his brain, until there was nothing left but skin and bones, a faint heartbeat. And even still, death would not fucking come.

  Mags didn’t want Sam to die. She wanted him to live, to be alive, to get back up on stage and play, to do all the things that he said he was going to do but never did, all the things he promised Mags. He promised. He promised. But this—this was not living. This was a kind of horrible limbo she didn’t understand. His heart was still beating, his skin was still warm. But his eyes, when she lifted his lids, were empty.

  One day a nurse told her that there might be a reason Sam kept hanging on the way he did. She had seen it before. They all had. That maybe he was waiting for something to happen. Or not happen.

  “I’m the one who’s holding him here,” Mags said to Emiko, sitting in the hospital Tim Hortons, trying not to stare at the old men with IVS in their arms and their gowns hanging open. Emiko had come to see her on her lunch break, in a suit and heels. Mags was in her pajamas. They both drank coffee. An open box of twenty assorted Timbits sat on the table between them, untouched. “I can’t let him go.”

  “I don’t know what to tell you, babe,” Emiko said, fiddling impatiently with the tab on the lid of her cup, sneaking glances at her phone. It was hard to believe that life still went on. “There’s no road map for this kind of thing.”

  Mags lowered her eyes down into her coffee. Emiko stopped her fiddling.

  “This is not my life,” Mags said.

  “But, babe, it is. And you’re going to have to get used to it.” Emiko stood up and air-kissed Mags’s cheek. “I have to go. I’ll see you at the studio later?”

  “Don’t leave,” Mags said, her eyes pleading. “Stay a little longer.”

  Emiko gave her a pitying look. “I’ll be at the office if you need me,” she said, squeezing Mags’s shoulder before walking toward the door.

  At Emiko’s touch, all of Mags’s composure shattered. “Come back here!” she yelled. She grabbed a Timbit, one of the jam-filled ones, and hurled it at the back of Emiko’s head. Emiko hesitated but didn’t turn around. “What are we even paying you for? Isn’t it your fucking job to be here for me?”

  Mags picked up another Timbit and threw it, and another, and another, pelting the back of Emiko’s head with donut holes, then—after Emiko had disappeared into the hospital hall—the door, until she felt a hand on her shoulder and she collapsed onto the table, the ridiculousness of it all completely overwhelming her: the garishly lit hospital coffee shop, the nightgown-clad onlookers, Emiko’s hair powdered with icing sugar like a sloppily decorated chocolate cake, the two tiny apple fritters Mags continued to hold on to, even as they crumbled to pieces in her fists.

  * * *

  That night, when most of the families had gone home and the graveyard shift of nurses and orderlies were just coming on, Mags slipped into Sam’s room. His eyes were closed, his eyelids fluttering softly, as they had done for days now. With every breath he took, phlegm rattled in his lungs, shaking his now tiny body, making Mags involuntarily clear her own throat. A soft red light flashed steadily on the digital output screen of his IV, saline and morphine and whatever else. For one alarming moment, Mags wondered if maybe Sam was still in there, if maybe he was not dying after all, and inside his brain he was screaming for freedom. Maybe all he needed was a sandwich and a strong cup of tea, and then he would open his eyes and sit up and tell her he had a new lick for that song he had been struggling with.

  But Mags knew this wasn’t true. She didn’t even hope it was true. But it made her sick to think that she would never know for sure.

  She leaned over. “Baby,” she said. “I love you.”

  Sam’s mouth moved, his lips sliding over his gums.

  “I’m going to be fine.” She paused, her eyes focusing on the fraying edge of Sam’s hospital gown. “I don’t need you anymore.” She sat back down on the unmade cot and thought about how much it hurt, in the midst of everything, to think that Emiko was probably right. And the second she admitted that to herself, it meant she was totally, completely alone.

  “Anyway,” she said, straightening up. “That’s it. You can go now, okay? Go now. Go.” She turned and walked out of the room, every inch of her body blistering with grief, but her eyes stubbornly dry.

  At five in the morning the nurse woke her. A rerun of I Love Lucy was playing, muted, on the television. Someone had covered her with a blanket. “It’s time,” he said. Mags pushed the blanket off with her feet. She wondered what kind of television station still played I Love Lucy, and who they expected to be watching it at five in the morning. This is what she was thinking about all the way to Sam’s room. She thought about it as she curled up next to Sam on the bed, her face pressed up against his, listening to his breath, his horrible, wheezing, rattling breath, the time lapsing between each gasp growing longer and longer. She thought about it as she waited, waited, waited.

  Maybe old people got up that early. Maybe they watched the reruns with their breakfast, and remembered when they were young and happy and in love.

  At five thirty, the pulse had completely faded from Sam’s wrist.

  At five forty-five, it was gone from his neck.

  At six, there was no trace of a pulse, but still a breath, a terrible, heartbreaking breath, every thirty seconds.

  Every forty seconds.

  Every minute.

  His breath in her ear.

  …breath.

  …breath.

  …

  Greywolf Artist Management Inc.

  For Immediate Release

  Toronto, Ontario – July 22, 2014

  It is with great sadness that we announce the death of one of our family. Sam Cole, bassist for the Toronto-based indie rock band Align Above, passed away peacefully in his sleep on July 22, after a short battle with cancer. He was 21 years old.

  Originally from Halifax, Nova Scotia, Cole dedicated his life to his band, and to his wife, Align Above singer Mags Kovach.

  “We are devastated at this terrible loss,” said Paul Van Ness, guitarist for the band. “Our commitment now is
to honour the work that meant so much to him, and continue to stay true to the music Sam wanted to make. And to make sure to be here for Mags, of course.”

  The band was in the process of recording their full-length debut album when Cole was first diagnosed, but he was able to complete work on the majority of the tracks before his death. The album will be released later this fall on KBI, with a portion of proceeds from the initial sales going to the Canadian Cancer Society.

  Reality Check

  Reality TV Writing for Reality TV Fans

  Absence Makes the Hart Grow Fonder ensures viewers get their fix of Hart drama (and heart puns)

  Kelly Gibson, staff writer

  11/21/14 9:00 am Filed to REVIEW

  Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve heard of Eden Hart, the YouTube star we watched transform from a peaches-and-cream preteen to a hot-mess-in-hot-pants on her LifeStyle reality television show, Where the Hart Is. (It’s only the real superfans who remember the show in its original, feel-good, family-friendly form, Home Is Where the Hart Is, which featured a whole slew of Harts trying to run a B&B in the picturesque fishing town of Gin Harbour, Nova Scotia.)

  Now that the teenage trainwreck is, predictably, in rehab, it’s her older siblings’ time to test out the spotlight. Absence Makes the Hart Grow Fonder follows Avalon and Valhalla Hart (yes, those are their real names) as they return to their native New York City and try to make it as, well, reality stars, we can only assume. The show, which premiered a mere four months after the cancellation of Where the Hart Is, is now five episodes into its first season, snapping up the coveted 9 pm slot on Thursdays.

  Ava (18) and Val (17) (as they prefer to be called) are likeable enough—Val has both the eyelashes and the disaffect to become a real teenage heartthrob, and Ava is still riding high on her 15 minutes, garnered when Eden pushed her sister off a pier during her epic breakdown this spring (we’ll never look at lobsters the same way again). But neither has the infectious charm of their younger sister. And while that might just be a matter of the two young stars getting used to living under the constant gaze of the camera, the real problem with Absence is that it doesn’t know what it wants to be.

  In the first few episodes, Ava and Val don’t do much more than make ham-handed attempts to rehash old family drama in a painfully obvious bid to remind viewers of their more famous sibling. In the fourth episode, for instance, Val and Ava discuss where to go for dinner, and somehow Eden’s name comes up no fewer than 37 times (we counted). The rest of the show is as aimless as its two stars, neither of whom seem to have any interests outside of fixing their (now-famous) hair or staring moodily out of windows.

  We would never want to speak ill of the struggling C-lister, so let’s chalk this one up to bad timing. After all, maybe the LifeStyle execs should have taken their own advice and let us feel the absence of one Hart before trying to shove two more down our throats.

  Ava

  November 2014

  AMTHGF S01E05:

  Cross My Hart

  “I don’t know a single person here!” Ava yelled to Val over the music, an annoying remix of whatever Rihanna/Drake song was popular that week, hacked up by a DJ who thought being able to press some buttons on his MacBook made him a real musician. Ava hated people who thought they were good at things. At least she knew she wasn’t good at anything. Except maybe getting guys to buy her drinks, of which she now had two, one in each hand, the first a Grey Goose martini bought for her by some walking Calvin Klein ad who claimed to be one of Justin Bieber’s backup dancers, and the second a can of PBR bought by a smarmy nineteen-year-old internet startup millionaire. Ava didn’t care, she’d take them both.

  “You mean nobody knows you,” said Val.

  “I’m just fulfilling my contractual obligation,” Ava said. One of the stipulations in the contract for their new spinoff show—ludicrously, but predictably, titled Absence Makes the Hart Grow Fonder—was that she and Val had to be photographed at least once a week at a hot New York nightclub. And there was no way in hell she was going out again this week if it wasn’t happening tonight.

  Val shook his head. “That’s why you came out tonight? For your weekly photo op? I thought you were actually interested in something other than yourself.”

  Ava shrugged, then handed Val the can of PBR. “I need to keep up appearances.”

  “Don’t let them eat your soul, Ave.” Val drained the can of beer and then tossed it onto the nearest table. “Now, which one of your fuckboys is going to buy me another?”

  Ava ignored him, sipping her martini as the music stopped and a couple of techs came onstage, the room filling with the anticipatory cacophony of instruments being tuned. “What is this band, anyway?” she asked, feeling her blood heat up as the vodka hit it.

  “Align Above. Remember, I told you about them? They’re from Nova Scotia,” Val said. “They’re going to be huge.” When Ava turned away, he grabbed her shoulders and pulled her back around. “Sometimes it can just be about experiencing something great, Ave. Sometimes it can just be about the music.”

  “Whatever,” said Ava, although she kept facing the stage. Her stomach heaved, but she downed the Grey Goose martini anyway, hoping that the drunkenness would overtake the nausea. She wasn’t sure if she was sick from the drink, or just sick, but she suspected it was the latter. The truth was that she hadn’t come for the band or the photo op. She had come to get out-of-her-mind drunk and forget for one tiny second the shitshow that was her life.

  “Oh my god, it’s Ava,” someone said, her name piercing the register above the tuning instruments. She allowed herself a brief eye roll before plastering on a smile, swallowing everything else down as a pack of wild girls descended on her from the other side of the room, all lip gloss and wet mouths ready to carry a piece of her home in their chemically whitened teeth. “Oh my god, can we please take a selfie?”

  “Fuck yeah,” said Ava, letting her words rasp across her throat like sandpaper. She leaned back and pursed her lips, flashing a peace sign. The girls shuffled in around her, one of them holding her phone up. In the phone’s screen, all she could see was a sea of shiny, platinum pixie heads, identical to hers, each one of them wearing their hair like a disguise. And Ava was no different. She might have been the most disguised of all.

  * * *

  They had been filming a fight scene earlier that day, in which Val was trying to convince Ava they should go back to Gin Harbour to visit Bryce and David. It was fake, of course—David was in Japan shooting a vodka commercial, and Bryce was on vacation with some friends in Cabo. Ever since Home Is Where the Hart Is ended, unceremoniously, after that night at the pier, the two of them had been travelling separately, and Ava wondered vaguely if they would get a divorce. Not that it mattered to her—even if they had been at the B&B, she wouldn’t have gone to see them. Within a week of her release from the hospital, Ava and Val had signed the contract for their spinoff, and she had left for New York before David and Bryce got back from California. As far as Ava was concerned, they had made their choice—and that choice was Eden and the cameras that followed her. It wasn’t Ava’s fault that after Eden had been in rehab for a few weeks, the cameras had turned elsewhere, leaving David and Bryce in the unseemly position of having their devotion to their troubled daughter go completely undocumented.

  The set-up for the scene might have been fake, but the argument with Val was not. “They want to see you,” Val told her as he sipped his coffee. It was a warm afternoon for late November, and they were sitting out on the terrace, where they were eating breakfast in their pajamas, stretched out on lounge chairs.

  “They know where we are,” said Ava, tossing a piece of her muffin to a pigeon perched on the parapet. The pigeon only had one full leg—the other one a pink stub jutting out of the silvery grey feathers, flopping erratically as it descended on the crumb. She was about to throw another piece when Val pushed her arm down to stop her.

  “Jesus Christ, Ave, can you stop
? It’ll never leave.”

  Ava shrugged Val’s hand off and threw it anyway. She knew he was right, about the pigeon and their dads. But she didn’t care. Secretly, she thought the pigeon was beautiful, with all those sleek, iridescent feathers, those silvers and purples threaded together, changing colour in the sun. It’s just that no one ever paid attention, that’s all. No one else ever bothered to look.

  “She flew all the way up here,” Ava said. “She deserves a reward.”

  “Bryce said he’s been calling you, texting you every day. You haven’t responded to anything. They don’t want to show up here without you saying it’s okay.”

  “It’s not okay.” Ava tossed another piece of her muffin. “You know if they came it would just be to get back on television.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Oh yeah? Why do you think they went to California in the first place? It’s not because they gave a shit about Eden. They placed their bets on the wrong fucking daughter and now they’re trying to backtrack.”

  “Cut,” said Antonio. “Ava, can you do that line again? This time without the swearing?”

  Ava sat up, startled. She had forgotten they were filming. “Can’t you bleep it out?”

  “We’d rather not.” He motioned to Javier, who set the camera up for a second take. “Just from ‘They placed their bets on the wrong daughter.’”

  Ava shivered as she heard her words repeated back to her. “No,” she said. She jumped to her feet, and the pigeon flew off. “I don’t want to do this.”