It was one of Gerry’s bad times, a muffled feeling, hopeless. She was lost in the mist and the grey drip drip drip of the trees.
Somewhere out there was a world of people, a busy humming world. But she was cut off from it by a sick and desperate unhappiness. And anger. She lay awake with it in the night and she opened her eyes to it in the morning. It had a relentless beat to it, a familiar refrain. It’s all shit, it went. You will never be happy.
She could see, as if from a long way off, that she was premenstrual. In theory she knew that the feelings wouldn’t last. But so what? A few weeks of feeling better and then this hammering would start again. It’s all shit.
Nothing was worth it. Nothing.
She could see the level dropping in the brandy bottle, but it wasn’t having any effect. She thought, in a muddled way, that it would be good to get out into the fresh air. A change of scenery.
She had trouble with the gate, and the steering on the ute seemed erratic. But the forest was as beautiful as ever. This green, these ferns and misty valleys, this was real. This was her place. Why hadn’t she realised its importance before? The forest had never failed her. The one thing in her life that had never failed her. She was the forest. She was the rich black humus from which these giant trees grew. She was the constant trickle of rain. She was the bird that skimmed between the ferns.
A great bubble of joy began to rise in her chest. The ute swooped and flew around the green bends. She let it have its head, let the steering wheel go.
After all the unhappiness it turned out to be easy. This easy.
She hit her head almost immediately and so never knew that the soft arches of the tree ferns were not nearly strong enough to cushion a plunging car.
She would have hated the ripping and gouging of delicate fronds and branches.