The Crime of Sheila McGough

As we talk to each other, we constantly make little adjustments to the cut of the truth in order to comply with our listeners’ expectation that we will guide them to the point of what we are saying. If we spoke the whole truth, which has no point—which is, in fact, shiningly innocent of a point—we would quickly lose our listeners’ attention. The person who insists on speaking the whole truth, who painfully spells out every last detail of an action and interrupts his wife to say it was Tuesday, not Wednesday, and the gunman was wearing a Borsalino, not a fedora, is not honored for his honesty but is shunned for his tiresomeness.
The interesting deal of Christianity, with its minuscule down payment and its grotesquely outsize dividend, is a constantly felt presence in her life.