Nothing is lost, and all is won, by a right estimate of what is real.
—Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures
Seamus lived in Wheaton, Maryland, in the last house on a quiet street that dead-ended at a county park. He’d bought the entire property, including a rental unit out back, at a decent price. This was after the housing market crashed but before people knew how bad it would get—back when he was still a practicing Christian Scientist, still had a job and a girlfriend he’d assumed he would marry. Now, two years later, he was single, faithless, and unemployed. The money his mother had loaned him for a down payment was starting to look more like a gift, as were the checks she’d been sending for the last year to help him cover the mortgage. His life was in disrepair, but for the first time in months he wasn’t thinking about any of that: he was sitting out back on a warm spring day with a woman. Her name was Charity, and she was a stranger.
Earlier that afternoon Seamus had been weeding by the driveway, and she’d stopped to ask him if the cottage in the backyard was available to rent. It was already rented, but soon they were on his deck, talking and sharing a six-pack Charity had been carrying and that she confessed she’d planned on drinking alone.
She wore cutoffs and a backpack—a faded green thing cinched around her waist. She had yellow hair, dark eyes, and a broad, easy smile that made it seem as if she would be perfectly comfortable anywhere but was especially pleased to find herself there, with him. He wasn’t a drinker, but in her presence he drank one beer and then another. By the third beer, he both wanted her desperately and suspected that no good could come of it—that to hunger for what you could touch was to invite disaster.
Charity lived in Arlington, with her ex-boyfriend and his aging mother. They’d been together ten years, she said, and the breakup was a rough one. She was trying to find a place as far away from them as possible but still on the Metro. “I just need to be out of that house,” she said, offering Seamus the last beer.
He said he was already drunk.
“You’re pretty tall for that,” she said. “You must not drink a lot.”
“I used to be a Christian Scientist.” He regretted the words as soon they were out of his mouth. People mixed Christian Science up with Scientology, or said things like, Is that the religion where you don’t believe in doctors?—as if he had refused to acknowledge doctors’ very existence.
Charity said that she’d had a Christian Science friend in high school; the religion had always reminded her of Buddhism. Buddhism had always reminded Seamus of Christian Science, and he said so. “Only Christian Science is unrelentingly positive. The world’s a harmonious place.”
“I imagine that’s a hard view to maintain,” Charity said, “once you start looking around.”
Yes, he said, it was.
Even after Seamus stopped taking care of his house, he had kept up the exterior for his tenants. Now, in the late-afternoon light, he could see how pretty the backyard looked: the little brick pathway that led to the blue and white cottage tucked back among the trees, beyond that the woods, shimmering green and gold in the late-afternoon sun.
“My ex’s house has the gravitational pull of a black hole,” Charity said. “I can’t believe I’m still here.”
“Congratulations,” Seamus said. Then he asked her to stay for dinner.
For months Seamus’s friends had been telling him he was depressed, and as soon as he stepped into his kitchen he saw what they meant: shades drawn, empty takeout boxes piled in the trash, the refrigerator looming in the dim light like a grimy white thumb. A year ago, he used to cook every night, but now all he could find was a package of ground beef rotting in the crisper and a can of pumpkin sitting inexplicably on the bottom shelf. In the freezer he located a month-old chicken and a stick of butter that he had bought one afternoon in a bout of hopefulness so brief that it had passed by the time he got home.
He defrosted the chicken in the microwave, sliced butter and stuffed it under the skin, and slid the whole thing into the oven to roast. When he turned around, Charity was standing so close behind him that he almost jumped. She had on her backpack. “I should leave.”
“Don’t.”
“I’m kind of a mess right now. You don’t need that.”
“Don’t tell me what I need,” he said, surprised by how forceful he sounded. She looked surprised, too, but when he reached out and pulled her toward him, she grinned.
—Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures
Seamus lived in Wheaton, Maryland, in the last house on a quiet street that dead-ended at a county park. He’d bought the entire property, including a rental unit out back, at a decent price. This was after the housing market crashed but before people knew how bad it would get—back when he was still a practicing Christian Scientist, still had a job and a girlfriend he’d assumed he would marry. Now, two years later, he was single, faithless, and unemployed. The money his mother had loaned him for a down payment was starting to look more like a gift, as were the checks she’d been sending for the last year to help him cover the mortgage. His life was in disrepair, but for the first time in months he wasn’t thinking about any of that: he was sitting out back on a warm spring day with a woman. Her name was Charity, and she was a stranger.
Earlier that afternoon Seamus had been weeding by the driveway, and she’d stopped to ask him if the cottage in the backyard was available to rent. It was already rented, but soon they were on his deck, talking and sharing a six-pack Charity had been carrying and that she confessed she’d planned on drinking alone.
She wore cutoffs and a backpack—a faded green thing cinched around her waist. She had yellow hair, dark eyes, and a broad, easy smile that made it seem as if she would be perfectly comfortable anywhere but was especially pleased to find herself there, with him. He wasn’t a drinker, but in her presence he drank one beer and then another. By the third beer, he both wanted her desperately and suspected that no good could come of it—that to hunger for what you could touch was to invite disaster.
Charity lived in Arlington, with her ex-boyfriend and his aging mother. They’d been together ten years, she said, and the breakup was a rough one. She was trying to find a place as far away from them as possible but still on the Metro. “I just need to be out of that house,” she said, offering Seamus the last beer.
He said he was already drunk.
“You’re pretty tall for that,” she said. “You must not drink a lot.”
“I used to be a Christian Scientist.” He regretted the words as soon they were out of his mouth. People mixed Christian Science up with Scientology, or said things like, Is that the religion where you don’t believe in doctors?—as if he had refused to acknowledge doctors’ very existence.
Charity said that she’d had a Christian Science friend in high school; the religion had always reminded her of Buddhism. Buddhism had always reminded Seamus of Christian Science, and he said so. “Only Christian Science is unrelentingly positive. The world’s a harmonious place.”
“I imagine that’s a hard view to maintain,” Charity said, “once you start looking around.”
Yes, he said, it was.
Even after Seamus stopped taking care of his house, he had kept up the exterior for his tenants. Now, in the late-afternoon light, he could see how pretty the backyard looked: the little brick pathway that led to the blue and white cottage tucked back among the trees, beyond that the woods, shimmering green and gold in the late-afternoon sun.
“My ex’s house has the gravitational pull of a black hole,” Charity said. “I can’t believe I’m still here.”
“Congratulations,” Seamus said. Then he asked her to stay for dinner.
For months Seamus’s friends had been telling him he was depressed, and as soon as he stepped into his kitchen he saw what they meant: shades drawn, empty takeout boxes piled in the trash, the refrigerator looming in the dim light like a grimy white thumb. A year ago, he used to cook every night, but now all he could find was a package of ground beef rotting in the crisper and a can of pumpkin sitting inexplicably on the bottom shelf. In the freezer he located a month-old chicken and a stick of butter that he had bought one afternoon in a bout of hopefulness so brief that it had passed by the time he got home.
He defrosted the chicken in the microwave, sliced butter and stuffed it under the skin, and slid the whole thing into the oven to roast. When he turned around, Charity was standing so close behind him that he almost jumped. She had on her backpack. “I should leave.”
“Don’t.”
“I’m kind of a mess right now. You don’t need that.”
“Don’t tell me what I need,” he said, surprised by how forceful he sounded. She looked surprised, too, but when he reached out and pulled her toward him, she grinned.
by Sarah Frisch, Paris Review | Read more:
