The Year I Almost Drowned (2 page)

authoritative tone.

My hands subtly shook. “What did I do?” I asked Cookie. I pulled my license and

registration out of my purse and almost dropped them before handing them to

Cookie.

“You were speeding and you ran a stop sign,” the stranger answered.

“I was?” I said in a surprised tone, still looking at Cookie.

Cookie nodded his head and frowned.

The stranger studied my license and said “You were going twenty miles over the

speed limit. It’s thirty-five, Miss Hemmings,” he said, making direct eye contact

with me, “not fifty-five.”

“I didn’t see a stop sign and I thought the speed limit was fifty-five,” I protested. I

know it’s not prudent to be argumentative with a police officer, especially when

he is holding a stack of tickets and a ball point pen in his hand, but I was confident

that I was absolutely right in this case.

“If you’ll just step out of the car, I’d be happy to show you the stop sign and the

speed limit sign,” he ordered more than asked.

I had a very bad feeling that I was about to eat crow. He backed away from the

door, allowing me to get out of the car. He was very intimating and stood well-

above me, blocking the shining sun from my watery eyes. He gently touched my

shoulder, motioning for me to stand in the same direction as him and pointed to

the sign which read in big, black bold lettering 35 MPH and then slowly moved

his index finger in the direction of the large, red octagon shaped sign with white

letters spelling out STOP. I looked away, embarrassed, but also a little annoyed.

He didn’t have to be so arrogant about it.

I glanced in Cookie’s direction. “A closed mouth will gather no feet, Finn,” he said.

“There’s not much you can do about it.” He scratched his chin and stood there

watching the other officer fill out a ticket.

“Humph,” I muttered under my breath.

He tore a copy of the ticket and handed it to me. “I’ve written you a ticket for

careless operations. You have thirty days to pay or contest it. You’ll find the traffic

court information on the back.” He turned the ticket over and showed me. “I was

letting you off easy, Miss Hemmings. You could have gotten two points on your

license and a ticket for $474 dollars. As you can see,” he pointed to the amount

on the ticket, “you have no points and the amount is $243. Speeding and failing

to stop at a stop sign are serious infractions. Please drive more carefully. Next

time, I won’t be so generous.”

I didn’t think $243 was being generous. I was about to say something but common

sense prevailed. It wasn’t worth another ticket. My blood was boiling; I was

fuming. I didn’t appreciate his condescension, his know-it-all attitude, and the fact

that Cookie just stood there and let the whole thing unfold.

I recoiled and uttered a quick superficial, “Thanks.” It took all I had in me to say

that

one

word.

“Thank Cookie. He asked me to be easy on you.” He strutted toward the police

car.

I gave Cookie a “thanks a lot” expression and placed my license back in my purse.

I wanted to crumble up the stupid ticket and throw it out on the road but decided

against it. Instead, I just sat there for a long time trying to keep myself from crying.

It was turning into a horrible birthday. I had only been nineteen for a few hours

and already I had received an expensive ticket and was lost in the middle of god

knows where with a mission to deliver a pie. The emotion of it all came over me,

and the tears started to fall. I couldn’t help it.

The police car pulled up beside mine. I glanced over in its direction and saw “Mr.

Pompous Pants” himself looking at me. His head was tilted and his lips were

twisted in a thoughtful expression. He opened up his door, got out and walked

over to me. I quickly wiped my eyes and tried to make it appear as if I hadn’t been

crying, but there was no way to hide that with my pale white skin.

“Miss Hemmings, are you okay?” “Yeah.” I sniffled

“Are you sure?”

“Well, actually, I’m not. It’s my birthday and now I have a ticket and I have to

deliver this pie but I can’t find the building!” I tried not to cry but it happened

anyway. I felt ridiculous for being a blubbering crying mess in front of a complete

stranger who had just helped ruin my birthday.

He stooped down so that we were eye level and quietly asked, “Where are you

trying

to

go?”

I looked at him and wiped my eyes. “3100 Tifton Drive.” I don’t know why I told

him.

Maybe

it

was

his

trusting

face?

“I know where that is. Follow our car, we’ll get you there,” he offered.

“That’s okay.” I didn’t want to accept any favors from him.

He sighed. “There’s no sense in you driving around getting lost, just follow me.”

“I’m fine, really,” I lied. I knew my face was blemished. Every time I cried, that

happened, and I hated my alabaster skin for it.

“Are we really going to do this all day?” His caramel eyes peered into mine.

I averted my eyes from his, annoyed, but knew that he had a point. He wasn’t

going to relent. We’d be there all day arguing about this.

“Fine.”

“Good.” His lips turned upward. “Just follow me.” He stood up and got back into

the car. I followed the police car for a few miles, making a couple of turns here

and there and before I knew it, we had arrived at the The Rotary Club of

Graceville. I turned the car off and got out carrying Nana’s pie in my hands. I

looked over at him. He rolled down his window.

“Thank you.”

“No problem. Can you find your way back?” he asked.

“I’ll have someone give me directions.”

He shook his head and said, “Tell me where you’re headed. I’m from here and

know most of the roads like the back of my hand.”

I told him my father’s address. He pulled a note pad out of his pocket and wrote

down explicit directions, along with a thorough diagram of signs and things to look

out for. He was being helpful and it made it really hard to dislike him. I studied the

directions he gave me and gave him an appreciative smile. “Thank you.” “You’re

welcome,”

he

said

and

rolled

up

his

window.

***

I found my dad’s house without any complication. The directions the police officer

had given me were incredibly thorough. Dad was pacing back and forth, while

smoking his pipe. Jack, his yellow lab, ran toward my car, his tail wagging. I

opened my door and was jumped on immediately.

“Jack, down,” Dad ordered.

“Hey, Dad,” I said. I reached over to hug him. He smelled like chestnuts and

cherries from his pipe tobacco.

He frowned and looked at his watch. “I was getting worried.”

“I’m sorry. I should’ve called. I had to deliver a pie for Nana and I got lost,” I said,

purposely leaving out the part about the ticket. I didn’t think he needed to hear

that detail. It would just make him worry and really, I was embarrassed about the

entire incident and wanted to put it behind me.

“Well, I’m glad you’re here. Next time call.”

I nodded. “I will. Are you ready to go?”

“Hang on,” he said and went inside his house. He came out holding a large square

shaped item wrapped in brown parchment paper. “Your birthday present.” He

patted it and moved toward the car. “Open the trunk.”

I suspected what it was, but wasn’t going to spoil his fun. Dad was an artist, a

very talented artist, and what he had put in my trunk strongly resembled the shape

of one of his painted canvases.

“Let me put Jack inside,” he said, as Jack trailed behind him.

He came back out, opened the passenger door and sat down next to me. He held

a thermos in one hand and tapped his fingers against the door with his other

hand.

The strong smell of freshly brewed coffee filled my car. “Nana has coffee, Dad.”

“I know, but I like mine better. Hers is too sweet.” He took a sip of his coffee and

looked around the car. “Do you like driving it?”

“Yeah. It’s better than Grandpa and Nana’s trucks.”

He chuckled quietly. “I’m glad you can get some use out of it since it was just

sitting all those years,” his voice trailed off. I looked down at his twitching hand.

At times it would subtly shake–a side effect from his medication for treatment of

bipolar disorder. It took years for anyone to figure out what was wrong with him,

why his behavior was so inconsistent–flip flopping from extremely happy to

beyond depressed. By the time I was two years old, my dad’s behavior had

become so erratic that everyone thought he was addicted to drugs. He’d spent

all my parents’ money and was even arrested for drunk driving. My grandparents

had to bail him out of jail. My mother didn’t know what was wrong with him, why

he had these moments where he was on top of the world, full of so much energy–

to times when he was so depressed he couldn’t get himself out of bed. It wasn’t

him. She said he wasn’t the man she had fallen in love with. He had become a

stranger to her.

And then he left, in the middle of the day, while Mom was at work and I slept

peacefully in my crib in my room. He left me all alone in the house, at the helpless

age of two. My mom doesn’t know how long I lay in that crib. She said that when

she came home, I was screaming at the top of my lungs and crying out for him.

It was like I knew he was gone. How a two year old can be that intuitive is beyond

me. I don’t remember any of this. My dad told me he kissed me goodbye when

he left. But I don’t recall that, either. He said that he got in his car and drove

straight to Atlantic City where he gambled the rest of my parents’ money away.

I don’t know what else happened, where else he went, what else he did. He hasn’t

told me, and I thought it was better not to ask. I know it’s not a pretty story and is

probably filled with too much heartache for me to hear and for him to tell. Some

things are better not known. Some things are better not repeated. In this case, I’d

rather focus on him being healthy, on knowing who he is now rather than all of

the mistakes he made in the past.

My grandparents suspected that when he left, he just died from a drug overdose

and was laying on the side of a road somewhere. I can’t imagine what they must

have gone through thinking that. They lost their son and had no idea where he

was and if he was alive. When my dad left, my mom simply gave up. She chose

to run away from it all–to Tampa, Florida, a place far enough away from

Graceville, South Carolina so we could start over. She never looked back.

That’s when the lies started. From that point on, I grew up believing that my father

had died in a car accident and that my grandparents, his parents, didn’t want

anything to do with me. That’s what my mom wanted me to believe. But they had

been trying to contact me for years, and she just shut them out. My mother said

she was trying to protect me, but her sheltering of me nearly smothered me. It

took sixteen years for me to discover the truth, for the secrets to unfold. On the

night of my graduation, I found a stack of letters from my grandparents hidden in

my mother’s closet. That’s when everything changed–when I got on a bus in the

middle of the night from Tampa, Florida, to Graceville, South Carolina, seeking

the truth. Before I found those letters, I was stuck to my plan: go to college,

become a doctor, get married, and have kids. But going to Graceville this past

summer made me view things differently. For once I saw that I couldn’t plan

everything in my life because life has other plans for me.

It was going to be a good birthday; it had to be, despite the ticket, getting lost,

and having a near breakdown. I wanted this birthday to be epic. It was going to

be the first time I’d be celebrating my birthday with my dad and grandparents,

and I wanted it to be memorable.

I dropped my dad off at my grandparents’ house and drove to Lilly’s Diner, my

grandfather’s restaurant. I had worked there as a waitress for over five months

and I loved everything about it–the food, the people who worked there, the

customers, and the fast pace of it all. It was the first job I’d ever had and after my

horrible first day, I would have never thought I’d still be working there months

later. Working at the diner had become as natural as breathing.

The roads were jammed with carloads of people who had flocked to Graceville to

see the changing leaves. The area was beautiful this time of year. Tourists from

surrounding towns and nearby border states came to town to see the colorful

show that nature put on during fall. Business at the diner was even busier than it

had been the year before which made my grandfather happy. He thrived on its

success.

The last of the customers exited the diner. It was closing time. The red awnings