Living in Molly’s apartment feels a little bit like a honeymoon, except of course for the hours of physical therapy I’m doing every day. I get up early and swim, then join her for breakfast. We read the newspapers together over toast and fresh coffee from the café, and then we each get to work – but now my work is my physical therapy with Tracy, and Molly’s awaits her at the Foundation building in Redfern.
By mid-afternoon, I’m finished and rested, and Molly returns to the apartment. We have promised each other that we will spend the afternoons together – even if we do nothing more than lie side by side on the couch to read. Some days, we meet up with Brad and Penny or my family, or we go out for coffee or dinner. Most days we go for a stroll through the Botanic Gardens near her house and we talk.
‘Can you tell me about a time when I was in the field and it was okay?’ I ask her one afternoon. She looks at me blankly.
‘Okay?’ she repeats, and I shrug.
‘Well, presumably you did get at least a little used to it. I mean, I was travelling to war zones from the first few months we were together and you were fine with it then.’
‘No, I really wasn’t. And I never got used to it.’
I just need a hint of positivity and her refusal to give it to me is frustrating. ‘That’s a bit overdramatic, don’t you think?’
‘I think that attitude is a big part of the reason I gave up on our marriage, actually.’
‘That attitude?’ I’m shocked, because I didn’t even realise I’d shown her attitude. I repeat my own words back in my mind, but the mystery is solved when she stops walking and says flatly, ‘That dismissive, arrogant streak that you have, which only creeps out when we talk about your work.’
I sigh and offer her an apologetic grimace. ‘I’m just trying to keep this conversation balanced.’
‘No, you’re trying to win. For you the best-case scenario in these chats is that I have a revelation that it was okay after all and you sort your mobility out and things go back to normal. You can’t talk me into that outcome. I didn’t lose my memory; I know what it was like. I worried about you constantly. The more I showed you that, the less you updated me. The less you kept in contact, the more I worried and the more isolated I felt. There was no point when you were away in a war zone and I woke up alone and thought to myself, well, this is nice.’
‘Okay, fine – but weren’t there times when you were more proud of my work than you were frustrated by it?’
‘I am absolutely proud of your work and now that I have a career I have a passion for, I even understand why you need to do it.’
‘So, there were assignments that you were supportive of me going on?’
‘I always tried to be supportive,’ she sighed. ‘But I love you, Leo. I wanted you with me. I married you to share a life with you, not to catch up every few months for a few days then feel you tear away again. Especially… especially now.’ She touches a hand to the gentle curve of her belly, and I nod, but I don’t say anything. The discussion remains unresolved, but I keep telling myself that we will figure out a middle ground, and a compromise too, and there will be a way that I can get back to my work and keep Molly in my life.
Because the more ‘at home’ I start to feel at Bennelong, the more desperate I am to get back into the field. It’s not that I want to run away from Molly, it’s just that I do love my job, and my days feel aimless without it.
I’m gradually reading back through the articles I wrote over the years I have lost. They are all familiar to me, but as I read them, I often remember the moments I spent in the field researching. This is bittersweet – because it makes me desperately want to return and that life feels so far away from me still. But it’s an exercise that I undertake almost as a form of study, because even reliving those days gives me a hint of the meaning that’s missing from my life.
One day, I read an article I wrote early in the Syrian conflict and I see an image Brad took of an old couple sitting among the rubble of their house. I remember a fleeting sense of frustration towards Molly as I see that photo and I show it to her when she comes home.
‘Oh yes, that,’ she sighs, and she offers me a sad smile. ‘We fought about that photo.’
I sigh too. ‘God, it just goes on and on. How did we fight about a photo?’
‘You showed it to me when you came home from your trip, and I told you that I thought they looked similar – I thought they were brother and sister.’
‘They do, I guess.’