1. Murchison !1
Katherine Murchison
Hemingway Piece
Iceberg Theory
20 May 2013
Deep End
When the sun was in her eyes, she thought about dying.
“Heaven must be like the beach,” she said.
It was always harder to hear her when he couldn’t read the shape of her mouth. He took
off his sunglasses to remove the tint from her face.
“Heaven must be like the beach.”
He watched as she lounged face up in the shade, her feet dangling off the edge, dripping
water onto the concrete. She turned to him as he put his sunglasses back on. There was still blue
paint in his hair. She became extremely cautious of her breathing in the silence. She wondered
how long she could hold her breath. The sun put thin strips of gold in the nearby pool. They
hadn’t put the gate up yet. She started breathing again and he got up and headed towards the
water.
“Will you grab the sun block?”
“It’s in the house and you’re in the shade.”
“…I could get skin cancer.”
“Well you’d kill me if I got water on the floor.”

2. Murchison !2
And he submerged himself in the cold haven, picturing for a moment an interminable
baptism. When he broke through the surface she was sitting on the ledge with her feet resting in
the pool.
“It isn’t my fault,” she said.
“I know.”
“It isn’t.”
“Why do you keep saying that?”
“Because things are different.”
“I know.”
“But it isn’t my fault.”
“Okay.”
She asked if he wanted a beer and when he said no, went in to the house and returned
with three. She pulled her lounge chair in to the sun and rested the cold bottle on her forehead.
She waited for him to notice her, but he was on his seventh lap. She had counted from inside.
After the first bottle he crawled out of the pool and sat back down, finishing the other.
“What do you think heaven is like?” she asked.
“Hell.”
“You shouldn’t say those kinds of things.”
“I’m not afraid of God.”
“You shouldn’t be.”
“Well then I can say whatever I’d like.”
After a long pause he added:

3. Murchison !3
“I just hope it’s not all white.”
“Like a hospital?”
“Yeah…like a hospital.”
He stood back up and sank into the water turned warm by the Georgia July sun. She
watched as he created ripples with his body, dancing with the natural current of man-made tides.
She rested her hand, wet from the bottle’s condensation, on her bare stomach, tracing the slowly
fading pink marks. The touch frightened her and she needed to be closer to something human.
She returned to the pool ledge. With her feet in the water, her toes looked pale and wrinkled like
a new-born’s.
“If you think about it, we’re really back to how we were before,” she said, examining her
toes.
He didn’t respond. He stayed under water for 38 seconds and thought about never coming
up. When he finally did, his face looked tear-stained and tired. She wanted to put her hand on his
cheek, but she hadn’t touched him in nearly a month. In an hour she would have to take a cold
shower and straighten up before his parents came, but for now she twirled her feet in the pool
with her head bent low. Fat tears rolled over her jaw line and plopped into the water, making tiny
ripples as they dove. A part of her wanted to wipe them away, but she allowed her tears the
freedom to fall.
“You don’t even look at me anymore.”
“That’s not true.”
“If anything you look through me, like you wish I just wasn’t here.”
“That’s not what I wish.”

4. Murchison !4
“I don’t know why you don’t understand that this isn’t my fault…none of it.”
And she sobbed, her eyes swollen and red, shoulders arched and shaking as she moaned.
He waded towards the pool steps and slowly pulled his body out of the water like an anchor. His
feet left wet, clumsy footsteps as he entered the house.
***
His parents never came to dinner. They were feeling under the weather. They overlooked
previous engagements. They were out of town. They were sorry.
In the shower he tried to scrub the blue paint out of his hair, drowning his head in white
foam, clawing at his scalp. Rinse repeat. Rinse repeat. The hot water drummed on the tile floor.
He shaved it off. In the living room she pretended like she didn’t notice. He sat in a brown
leather armchair, brand new, a gift to himself.
“What should we do with the room?” he asked.
And they sat together and separate in silence; both imagining the room impregnated with
laughter and warmth.