IRISH LOVESTORY - The first sparks of Anger

 

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The First Sparks of Anger

Jack and I continued our life in what I thought of as our little nest of love. He devoted himself to his Melaleuca project, traveling from one presentation to another, sometimes inviting me along. Once he brought me to a conference at the Seven Oaks Hotel. Stage fright was something foreign to him—he could sell anything, even air. Charming, quick when he wanted to be, and attentive in public, he seemed to collect admiration wherever he went. His friends spoke often of how wonderful he was. But no one saw him as I did, behind closed doors.

Gradually, I began to notice shadows flickering at the edges of his charm. I told myself it was nothing more than his temper—sharp, unpredictable, but harmless.

One evening, after visiting Martina—where our talk had meandered, as women’s conversations do, toward futures and families—I lay beside Jack in bed.

“Martina and I were talking today,” I said lightly, “and she thought it might be good for us to start thinking about family. She mentioned that she and her boyfriend are already planning.”

Silence pressed down, heavy and suffocating. Then Jack sat up abruptly.

“You can’t be serious! That bitch is going to tell us how to live? What else did you talk about?” His voice struck like a whip.

I froze, startled, then tried to steady myself. I had only wanted to understand where we stood—he had never spoken of family before.

“I don’t want you spending time with her,” he snapped. “She sticks her nose where it doesn’t belong. Let her worry about her own life.” He turned away and ended the conversation with finality.

The next day I told Martina what had happened, unwilling to abandon our friendship so easily. She listened with quiet sympathy, but the distance Jack had demanded between us lingered like a bruise.

Not long after, I noticed Jack sometimes went out at night without me. One evening, unable to ignore the gnawing unease, I followed him into town. From a bench, I watched him with Tom and Niamh—the singer who had once shared a stage with him. A wave of anger surged through me, sharp and hot. How could he move so freely, while demanding silence and restraint from me? But almost at once I scolded myself. I told myself I could not ask him to give up his freedom. If he wanted to be with me, he would be. So I swallowed my anger, buried my jealousy, and began punishing myself instead—quietly, relentlessly.

Once, during an argument, I started packing my suitcase in defiance. He seized it from me, flung it into the hallway, and it shattered apart. Strangely, I did not see violence in that moment; instead I twisted it into proof that he wanted me to stay, that he could not bear to lose me. Arguments happen in every relationship, I told myself. I did not dwell.

But I was beginning to understand that Jack’s life was threaded through with complications I had barely glimpsed. He owed favors everywhere, debts he could not untangle. He once admitted that many of them had begun with Alice, who had lured him into loans and left him trapped in their spiral.

One day, the weight of it all erupted. The landlord had come about the rent, and Jack was already behind. I had never grasped how serious the situation was. After the landlord left, I watched Jack pace the living room, restless and seething. Then, without warning, he hurled a coffee mug against the wall. Coffee splattered across plaster and ceiling in dark arcs. I said nothing, afraid to stir the fury simmering in him. Later, when we moved, he repainted the walls himself.

The bitterest truth was that I had always paid my share of the rent, wherever we lived.

And so, once more, we moved. By the time we settled in Carlow, half the town must have known our faces. We were nomads of necessity, always uprooted, always leaving something better behind for something worse. This time, too, the new house felt smaller, colder. I was growing weary of it all—the endless shifting, the constant decline.