Does it ever get better? by Lolly Vieira

The US 20 East was vacant at this time of night- or early morning, rather. The digital clock in the rental car flashed 4:18am in blue light. The summer sky was a navy ocean, a sea full of stars, but Bella didn’t notice. She only saw the barren road being lit up by the headlights of her Mercedes. She shifted uncomfortably in the black leather seats, her slender thigh sticking to it with sweat. Her sigh broke the heavy silence in the car, her rib cage expanding like a swelling battery about to burst. Her empty stomach yelled at her in growls like an angry lion, but her pride made her deaf to it. The Adderall she’d sniffed earlier that evening was wearing off, but she tried to avoid thinking about it as the spots between her fingers and toes began to itch again. She’d been driving for almost an hour and a half already. It felt like four. Bella hadn’t made this trip, or even driven a car, in what she guessed was two years. She never came to Idaho unless she had to and was glad she had purchased the cabin when she did. Coming to Boise and having nowhere to escape to wouldn’t have really been feasible for her. The red light by the gas gauge illuminated the dashboard.

“Fuck,” she said out loud.

Bella pulled into the nearly vacant lot of the Sinclair gas station. She knew they didn’t let you pay at the pumps here. She parked at pump two facing the dingy little store that read, “Camas Creek County Store,” in a hideous font of all caps. Bella reached her left hand over the sequin mini skirt stretched across her lap and unbuckled her seatbelt. She grabbed her clutch and Gianvito Rossi crystal-embellished mesh pumps in the passenger seat and slipped them onto her bony feet. Her chiffon blouse ruffled from a strong gust of wind that rushed into her car as she opened the door. She knew if one were to look close enough, they probably would have been able to see straight through her shirt to her bare, flat chest. Afterall, she designed it that way. Well, she didn’t design it, but she paid for someone to design it. And she told other people she designed it. Her heels made an earsplitting clop clop clop as she marched towards the red and white building. Her taut arm tensed as she pressed open the front door.

“Fifty on pump two,” Bella said expectantly as she approached the counter. The doe-eyed teenage clerk looked her up and down twice. She was certain he didn’t see people like her often. Even without her heels she was close to six feet tall. Her knees protruded from her legs like mountains in a valley. And there was no doubt in her mind that her Bulgari clutch was worth more than he made in a month, but she didn’t expect the chubby, ginger-haired boy behind the counter to know that. She pulled a crisp hundred-dollar bill out of her purse and held it out for him portentously, still standing a good foot away. He gawked at her with his jaw slack.

“Well?!” she scoffed with raised eyebrows as the boy quickly shut his mouth and leaned across the counter to grasp the bill from her painted acrylic nails.

“Wait,” Bella said abruptly, “I’ll take a pack of Marlboro Lights and…” Her aching stomach rumbled like thunder in a stormy sky. She figured she might as well grab something to eat, that way she wouldn’t have to stop anywhere before she reached the cabin; people were an annoyance she tried to avoid at all costs. She ripped an unassuming bag of beef jerky off a nearby shelf and threw it on the counter to be scanned by the anxious worker. She held out her long fingers and waited for him to carefully place the change in her hand. Bella spun around, perhaps quicker than intended, her bleached blonde hair flipping, her impatience growing, as she click-clacked out of the store at a surprising speed and whispered underneath her breath, “Fat fucking idiot.”

Immediately, she regretted buying the beef jerky. It wasn’t like she was really going to eat it anyways. But she figured maybe having this little obstacle in front of her for the rest of the drive would be empowering. Her indomitable will to resist this animal slain in vain would energize her far more than the two hundred and sixty calories in the bag.

She could sense the anger growing in her shoulders as she approached the car. She knew it was there. Her head was down, staring at the dirt, but she couldn’t resist the urge to look up at that impertinent billboard. You don’t have to be perfect to be the perfect parent, it yelled at her. She sneered at it. Her subconscious instantly conjured up the image of her blonde-haired, blue-eyed mother. She didn’t know what the perfect parent would be, but it sure as hell wouldn’t be that bitch.

“Does no one ever change the fucking billboards?” she asked angrily to no one in particular, lighting a cigarette far too close to the gas pumps.

Bella hurriedly filled the tank then threw her purse and shoes back on to the passenger seat with the hostile bag of food that mocked her. She locked the doors and sped off towards the entrance ramp of that old, familiar highway that she loved to hate.

The trip to Sun Valley was a little over halfway finished from here. Bella wished she had some sort of stimulant besides her cigarettes to help her power through the rest of the journey and kicked herself for buying beef jerky instead of an iced coffee. She had butterflies in her stomach thinking about returning to the cabin. It was a similar feeling to the kind one gets when they’re waiting in line to ride a roller coaster for the first time. But even still, she worried the orchestra of sensations and sounds from her midsection wouldn’t be enough to keep her awake for the next hour. She had grown relatively numb to complaints from down there. With an irritated push, she turned the radio on and rushed through the stations to 90.3FM. Her hopes for classical music were dashed by the sound of two velvet-voiced men discussing the last song that had been played.

“Are you fucking kidding me,” she said exasperatedly, “I just want to listen to some goddamn music, not these two fucks!”

There was something soothing about classical music to Bella, jazz, too. She would always remember the first time she listened to the sweet sound of a saxophone ripping through the air. How bold, boisterous, and absolutely, breathtakingly beautiful it was to her. But she tried not to think about it for fear that her autonomous psyche would lead her to the recollection of how her mother’s face had contorted when Bella asked her if she could learn to play the saxophone.

“Women don’t play saxophones,” she had managed to spit out between laughs, “Besides, you wouldn’t have the lungs for it anyway.”

Suddenly, Bella wanted to scream. And so, she did. She yelled continuous, abstruse nothings at the top of her lungs until her voice cracked. She thought for a brief instant that she wanted to cry, but no tears touched her gaunt cheeks. She couldn’t remember the last time she cried. Well, actually, she could, but she refused to. She practiced every mental gymnastic she could to avoid thinking about him. The loss was too much to comprehend. The guilt was even worse. She screamed some more.

Her furious finger attacked the channel button of the radio, frantically flipping through stations. One of them was playing a dubstep track she recognized. Bella screamed again. Visions of flashing lights from an ambiguous club resembling all the downtown LA and NYC clubs she had ever been to (which was all of them) consumed her. It was as if she could still smell the urine-soaked floors of their bathrooms as she inhaled white powders off the emaciated hands of her Elite Model Management coworkers. The memory of whiskey and cocaine burning her throat made her choke as if a giant hermit crab had its claws around her neck. She ached for that habitual pain and haphazardly flung open the glove box. Her fingers curled around the neck of a glass pint bottle. With one hand, she unscrewed the cap and chugged the nearly full container desperately to completion. She reveled in the pain as it splashed around in her hollow stomach; it was everything she believed she deserved, fire burning through her vacuous core.

Bella rolled down the tinted window and pitched the bottle outside. The crashing sound of glass shattering into a million pieces brought a crooked smile to her face. She lit another cigarette. Able to focus once again on something other than the constant anguish from her failing mind and body, she continued to scroll through the stations, unsatisfied with each new noise the crackling radio produced. Finally, a familiar melody made her stop in her tracks. It wasn’t her beloved symphony music devoid of lyrics, but a song that seemed to be from another life.

“How does it feel to feel nothing at all I wonder…” * the poignant piece began. Bella felt as if the whiskey she just drank was about to come back up. Every fiber of her being was pleading for it to stop, but she was paralyzed. Her brain began to play tricks on her. It made her feel the earbud in her ear, the metal lockers behind her back, and his fingers intertwined with hers. She inhaled deeply, almost as if hoping to catch a whiff of his cherry blossom body spray, something he told her he would never give up, even after he was able to complete his transition.

“I don’t understand why there are literally no decent scents for men,” Andrew had stated with a twinge of humor in his voice, “Even when I get to eventually grow a beard, I’m gonna smell like goddamn cherries! I refuse to smell like MUSK!! What the hell does that even mean anyways?” They had laughed about it together, nestled closely hoping that the school bell would never ring. But time never froze for them, no matter how desperately they had wished for it to.

“And I don’t wanna suffer through all those moments without you when I lost you…” *

Bella was bombarded by her most hidden memories with each line the tune assaulted her ears with. She recalled the last time she cried all too well. Standing in her black dress, it was as if her eyes were a running faucet that would never turn off, like someone had broken the handle, or maybe it was connected to a faulty fire hydrant. She had gazed at the closed box through remorseful, watery eyes for hours, different people passing by, offering their polite condolences to her deafened ears. She had wanted to open the casket and climb in with him, even if just to hold him one last time, but Andrew’s parents embarrassingly admitted to her that there wasn’t much left of his face to even recognize him by. He hadn’t just placed a gun in his mouth and shot through his brain like most people; he had taken his dad’s shot gun and aimed directly at his own face. Bella knew she didn’t want to see the aftermath.

“Annabel would have wanted you and all her friends to remember her fondly,” they said with mournful eyes, “not like this…” Bella had spat at them before running past the pews to exit through the double doors. She never saw them again except for in her nightmares.

“Feelings, oh feelings, you tear me apart and I wish I could start again…” *

She unexpectedly found the strength to change the station, perhaps stemming from her strong denial that this was, in fact, not a sad song, but rather one which reminded the listener that it was a blessing to experience emotions and be alive. It didn’t seem like a blessing to Bella. She paid no attention to the positivity; existence was pain, she wished she could be lucky enough to feel nothing.

Bella thought she felt a tear welling in her eye, but before it could fall, she noticed something in the road and swerved. If there had been any trees nearby, she would have crashed into them. Bella flipped her flashers on quickly and hopped out of her car without stopping to put her shoes on. Her heart pounded like a drum. She ran across the dark, unoccupied road to what appeared to be a turtle in its shell, presumably frightened from almost being hit.

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry,” Bella said as she began to pick it up.

She was reminded of her beloved hermit crab tank back in New York. Not many people ever came back to her penthouse, but those that did saw her obsession with her beloved crabs as a bit eccentric. The tank took up an entire wall and had multiple levels within it. Ornate shells cluttered the sand, giving the hermit crabs many options for when they were ready to size up. If one were to thoroughly inspect them, it would have been discernable that each shell was hand-made. Bella had spent many nights close to falling out, drowning out the voices in her head with the buzz of the large flat screen, painstakingly painting miniature mandalas and other various patterns on them. Each rhinestone had been glued with care and a nontoxic paste.

But something wasn’t right with this turtle. As Bella more closely examined the shell, she saw the turtle’s corpse, mostly in, but partially hanging out from its cracked shell. In a fit of horror and despair, Bella hurled the shell as far as she could while screaming once again. Not wanting to draw attention to herself, she quickly got back into the car, lit another cigarette, and resumed driving.

Her stomach was queasier than it had been in a long time. The siren call of the beef jerky overpowered the radio. After discarding the cigarette butt out the window, Bella tore open the bag in fury and held a singular piece in front of her face. The ongoing dispute seemed eternal. She had a hard time remembering food ever being her friend. Even when it brought her relief after his death, the fact that she couldn’t control how much came in, or how much went out, wasn’t exactly friendly. It had taken her years to finally master the discipline to say no to even the most soothing of foods and she wasn’t ready to relinquish this accomplishment. The faint smell was sickening, it reeked of failure and weakness. Bella screamed for a split second before shoving the whole piece in her mouth. Each attempt to chew was like sticking screws in her gums. She berated herself for not picking something softer. As the dried meat became more pliable, the compulsion kicked in, and Bella found herself spitting chewed up beef down the front of her top.

“You stupid fucking bitch!” she shouted at herself, “Unfuckingbelievable.”

She pulled over at the Magic Reservoir Historical Marker, the only thing in sight for miles, to grab a different shirt from her suitcase in the trunk. Bella considered bringing the barfed-on blouse with her, but quickly remembered there was no washer or dryer at the cabin and chucked it on the side of the road. She didn’t need it anyways.

The fifth of scotch rolling around in the trunk that she had stolen from her stepfather’s stash after dinner the previous night called out to her. She grabbed it and slammed the trunk shut. Sitting in the driver’s seat, she pressed her red-stained lips to the mouth of the bottle and took a long gulp. Then she put it into the seat next to her with her heels and clutch, sparked another cigarette, and turned the car back on. She shut the radio off, preferring the silence and hoping that the adrenaline rush of the turtle and vomit would be enough to keep her going; that and the scotch.

She spent the rest of the drive in a hazy trance of nicotine and knife-like gulps until the bottle was drained and the rental car smelled like an ashtray. She followed a modest gravel road that wound through a towering forest just beginning to come to life from the early sun’s grating rays. She had hoped to get there before sunrise, but she knew she wouldn’t. Her adversary came every morning to confront her and illuminate her darkness despite best efforts to conceal. Arriving at the antiquated log cabin, she screeched to a halt and pulled the key out of the ignition.

Bella’s long, cramped limbs felt relief as she peeled her gangly body out of the foreign vehicle. Her calves flexed in pain from the sharp rocks under her bare feet. She grabbed her heels and purse from the seat as the pine trees annihilated her nostrils. Staring at the barren snowy caps of a mountain in the reflection of a nearby lake, she didn’t smile. Instead, she tucked her head down, hoping to block out the twittering birds singing their good morning warbles, and made her way up the path to the front door. Her fingers stumbled over the rust-covered doorknob while her silver key slipped effortlessly into the keyhole. The door let out a sorrowful groan as she tentatively pushed it open, like the prodigal son returning home. Her hand grazed along the bumpy wall in search of a switch. The dim light flickered before deciding to stay on. She shut the door behind her, forgetting the burgeoning outside world not a minute too soon, and surveyed the cabin’s surroundings which starkly contrasted her penthouse in New York.

The wall to her right held a variety of unused saxophones that, had they not been covered in a thick layer of dust, would have shimmered even in the glow of the subdued fluorescent bulb. For a flash, they garnered her attention, but she quickly averted her gaze in shame and looked to the left. She stared at a spot of peeling grey paint. Although blemishes like this generally disturbed Bella, she experienced a moment of acceptance; two flawed, deteriorating things at home with one another. She quickly shook the notions from her head. Dust swirled in the air as she strode across the creaking wooden floors. She let her skeletal body drop like a brick on the meager bed against the far wall and carelessly tossed her stilettos and clutch in the corner of the room.

The floral pattern of the comforter on the twin-sized bed assaulted her eyes with its burnt orange and dull greens. Bella wondered what sort of idiot would make such a hideous thing. As the discolored pillow cradled her cranium, she noticed the room beginning to spin. But she was still all too aware of the voice in the back of her head, so she reached into the hidden spot between the bed and the wall where her dearest friend was waiting for her. Propping herself up slightly, she opened the bag and poured a pile of heroin onto the concave part on the top of her hand between her thumb and index finger.

“Ohthankfuckinggod,” she breathed after pulling it up her nose. For the first time since she’d landed in Idaho, the knots in her shoulder muscles relaxed. She fell back down onto the bed and closed her tired eyes. The soothing numbness that she called happiness was upon her once again. Her frail limbs grew heavy with complacency and a heat radiated throughout her aching bones. Her delirious mind began to wander to memories of watching her previous lover, Faith, heating up heroin in a spoon.

“Needles are for junkies,” Bella had explained to her pretentiously, “We’re actresses, have some goddamn class.”

Bella couldn’t think of a time she had ever said a kind word to her, even after Faith had come to her sobbing that the director had groped her breast with his grubby hand and stuck his filthy tongue in her mouth.

“You’re a fucking idiot. Here you are crying to me like a goddamn fool when you should be in his trailer demanding twice the pay,” Bella had roared, “You’re being a pathetic little girl. Instead of wallowing in self-pity, why don’t you act like a real woman and get something useful from it.” Of course, Faith only crumpled further into herself with an anguish that even the black tar couldn’t paint over.

“I can’t believe you’d even be surprised,” Bella had continued, ignoring her, “What the hell did you expect? Everything comes with a price. You think he picked you because you’re talented? You’ve got the talent of a wet fucking rag. You must have known that, or you wouldn’t have gotten those plastic tits in the first place. If you were smart, you’d get something out of it. I got a prize-winning Arabian horse and an entire goddamn stable from Kennedy. Now THAT’S talent.” She had smiled arrogantly as she left, reminiscing about how much the cost had upset her mother who had told him he was an imbecile for wasting so much money on his stepdaughter rather than saving for their son on the way.

Bella wondered where Faith was these days. After that speech, Faith had quit the production all together and even left California. She speculated Faith had changed her phone number, but she never tried calling again. Bella wouldn’t have known what to say, and anyways, the indie film had ended up casting Bella as the lead role instead of Faith (after a few manipulative words with the director). She’d been too busy attending the Sundance Film Festival and fielding interviews to apologize. She imagined Faith watching the movie from the loneliness of a small home, similar to the cabin she was in right now, and envisioned her shooting up like a feeble junkie. She almost felt bad for her.

Bella placed another bump of heroin on her hand and inhaled. The quiet rang in her ears and she wished there was a television here. Unexpectedly, Bella’s text alert on her cellphone penetrated the air like rough hands ripping lace. She didn’t usually have service at the cabin, that was one of the things she loved most about it. She told herself to just ignore it, but her curiosity was a cat trying to claw its way out. She dug through her purse with deadened fingers that threatened to give out at any second. Bella tried to quickly scan the novel of a text her mother had sent.

I cannot believe you left without saying goodbye. I hope you’re happy with yourself. How do you think it makes Kennedy look that his own daughter couldn’t be bothered for a family photo? You know what the reelection means to us. I’ve rescheduled a photographer for tomorrow at noon. I expect to see you.

-Mumsy

“You fuckin’ cunt!” Bella shrieked as she lobbed her phone against the wall of saxophones in a burst of unforeseen energy. Dust exploded from the instrument and the floor as it fell with a thud. She stumbled off the bed towards the fallen saxophone. Tripping over her own feet, she dropped to the ground and continued towards the wall on all fours. Bella weakly picked up her cellphone and grinned, satisfied by its cracked screen and inability to turn on anymore, then half-heartedly cast it near the door. She looked longingly at the saxophone sitting beside her that her dry lips had never touched. She knew that its complexities would forever remain a mystery to her. Rather than hanging it back on the wall, Bella defeatedly crawled back to the bed and buried her face in a pillow. Her elegant features were knotted in agony, making thick lines on her forehead. She came back to her tiny bag of solace and poured a pile onto the nightstand next to the bed. Using her ID, she shaped the powder into a long, straight line. She pulled a new hundred dollar bill out and rolled it into a straw before sniffing all three inches of it. Then she laid on her back, her arms and legs immobile, her ruminations refusing to halt.

“Listen, bitch,” she said, imagining what she would say to her mother the next time she saw her, “you, your pedo husband, and your stupid son are not my fucking family. And honestly, your whole hillbilly state is screwed if they reelect that piss poor excuse for a man.” Her eyelids became acutely aware of the immense gravity yearning to pull them closed.

“You’re gonna die jealous of me; look how much you need me, I hope it hurts,” she continued as her heartrate decreased.

“Kiss my cellulite-free ass because this is the last time you’re ever gonna see it,” Bella carried on with a chuckle to herself. She paused; her words began to jumble in her head. She imagined her mother’s wrinkled eyes squinting in dismay and envy. She wondered if her stepfather would interject on her behalf. Then she thought of her half-brother and added, “Have fun raising your mini rapist; he really is the spitting image of his father.”

Bella considered writing some of it down, she didn’t want her cleverness to be forgotten, but she found her legs still weren’t listening to her. Her arms weren’t either. She began to feel as if someone were sitting on her torso; the weight of her lungs increasing with each breath. She had felt the same tightness in her chest the day she found out she had lost Andrew, and later that night when her stepfather confessed to her that he assumed she was a lesbian, but now that he knew she liked men, he was going to show her what a real man was like. She had felt it sitting at the clinic waiting to abort the parasite he had left in her, while her mother grew the one in her belly. She had felt it every time she saw Faith’s phone number in her contacts. The warm wetness of a tear ran down the side of her face for the first time in twenty years as she stared at the blank ceiling. The edges of her eyesight began to fade into nothingness.

The last thing Bella pondered before losing consciousness was if someone would find her hermit crabs at home in time to save them. She knew they wouldn’t, though, and, in her mind, she heard the last line of Andrew’s favorite song.

“It’s just better to feel and know you’re alive while reminding yourself that it’s temporary, oh it won’t last for long…” *

* Lyrics to “Temporary Nothing” are property of Mxmtoon, I do not own any rights to them.