Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang

  "Well, what kind of coincidence is that?" he was saying. "I just drove a fella from New Jersey to the very same Taco Bell. He was an accountant. Real nice guy, real hungry."

  "Was his name Greg?"

  "Yes, it was," and then he slapped his leg again. "He done try and walk through the drive-through, and when they sent him away, he came and hailed me down in the middle of the road!"

  "That sounds about right." We were at the window now, so my first goal was to get in my order for two Taco Supremes. Then I asked my date if he wanted anything.

  "Oh, God no. I can't eat this crap."

  "I'll take three, then!" I yelled back into the window.

  When we pulled back in to the parking lot of the karaoke bar, I spotted Greg sitting on the top part of a bench facedown in a burrito.

  We pulled up right in front of him, and with half of a taco in my mouth I yelled, "Greg, look who I found!"

  Greg looked up and walked over to the car with a big smile on his face. He liked this kind of nonsense very much. "Good evening, Chelsea, I see you've met my friend Large Luke."

  Greg still keeps in touch with Luke to this day, because that's how Greg is. He finds extreme joy in people who no one else would pay attention to. Then he'll invite them to stay at his house for the weekend while his wife hides in the bedroom with their three children and makes porridge.

  By the time I got back to my parents' house, it was midnight. I walked in the door to find Sloane and Mike sitting at the kitchen table each having a bowl of cereal and my other brother Ray watching a Mets game in the living room.

  "Is Greg here?" I inquired.

  "No," Ray said, looking up from the game, eyeing the matted hair stuck to my forehead. "Where are you just coming from, a pole vaulting class?" I had gotten quite a workout dancing and had probably lost a significant amount of water. I was laser-focused on weighing myself.

  "Don't ask, Ray," Sloane interrupted. "I thought Greg was with you."

  "He was, but we lost each other, and the cabdriver said he dropped him off here an hour ago."

  "I haven't seen him," she said, and then asked Ray if he had.

  Ray has the demeanor of someone who really isn't bothered by much and would greatly prefer to watch the Mets lose one game after another while he idly sits by. "Heartbreakers," he mumbles every time a game ends. "These guys are killing me."

  "Well, I'm a little concerned, Sloane," I said. "I don't know where he is."

  "He's thirty-four," Ray said. "I'm sure he's fine. Chelsea, why don't you go into the kitchen and have some Gatorade? You look a little pale and stupid."

  "I'm going to check in the basement," I announced, and headed toward the sliding glass door that leads to our front deck. "Ray, come with me. I'm scared."

  "Wait for this inning to end."

  "Sloane, come with me. I'm scared."

  Sloane got up and came outside. We walked around the deck to the set of stairs that leads down to the basement, and we saw all of Greg's clothes folded neatly on one of the steps, with his sneakers next to them.

  "Oh, my God!" I screamed, grabbing Sloane. "He probably swam to Chappy!" Our dilapidated house in Martha's Vineyard is positioned in front of Katama Bay. On the other side of it lies Chappaquiddick. Chappy, for short. This is the smaller island that became famous for the incident where a drunk Ted Kennedy drove his car off a small bridge and left a woman there to drown. Silly Kennedys.

  The distance between our beach and Chappy's beach is a little under a mile. Greg likes to swim through all the boats docked in the bay to the other side. This activity performed sober and in the daytime is risky for anyone other than a salmon.

  "Oh, my gosh," Sloane said.

  "We have to go get him. He'll drown." I sprang into full panic mode, and it was infectious. Sloane was instantly on board with my paranoia, and we ran inside to get the boys.

  "You guys, Greg went down to the water and swam to Chappy in the dark. We have to go get him!"

  This was Mike's first visit to our summerhouse, and he had no idea if swimming to Chappy was good or bad, but he definitely reacted with the appropriate look of panic in his eyes. He was already perplexed by the fact that my parents had a house on Martha's Vineyard, even though my father hadn't had a real job in a decade and dressed like a circus carny.

  Mike glanced at Ray, who was still reclined on the sofa. "He's fine. He does it all the time."

  "Not at night, Ray!" I wailed.

  "He's on mushrooms!" Sloane added.

  "Who has mushrooms?" Ray asked.

  "I did," I told him. "Greg and I split them. There aren't any more."

  He looked back at the TV. "Well, no wonder you're acting schizophrenic, Chels. Why don't you go weigh yourself or something?"

  "I am not being schizo," I told him. "We need to go down to the water and see if he's okay. That is our brother, Ray!"

  "Mom hid the scale," Sloane announced.

  "What do you mean?" I asked her. "You can't hide a scale."

  "She hid it because she thinks you weigh yourself too much. You're becoming obsessed."

  "Where did she put the scale, Sloane?"

  "I have no idea. She just said she was hiding it."

  "Check in the washing machine," Ray suggested. My mother pulled this number often with the TV remote control when she was sick of watching my father sitting on his ass all day. More often than not, she forgot about it and ended up washing several remote controls throughout the summer.

  The scale turned out to be in the dryer, so I took it out and slid it underneath for later, where I knew no one would ever see it. Then I refocused myself on the task at hand.

  "Okay, Sloane," I said, clapping my hands. "Ray, are you coming or not?"

  "Girls, it's a bay. There are no sharks or manatees or whatever you think is going to get him. He's done it a million times. Please relax. If he gets tired, he can just hop on one of the boats. Seriously, girls. You are giving me severe headacheage."

  My next move was to burst into tears, which caused Sloane to also start crying. Mike walked over and, with absolutely no conviction, put his hand out to comfort us but then retracted it and, not knowing what else to do, crossed his arms.

  "Let's go," Sloane said, and we headed back out the sliding door. "Mike, go down to the basement and get a flashlight."

  The water was about a hundred yards from our deck. Mike met us at the front of the house with an industrial-size flashlight. From there we headed across the lawn to the dirt road and found the path that went down to the water.

  Sloane and I were still crying as we ran like lunatics through the pitch black with the flashlight bouncing all over the place. The tree-canopied path that leads to the water is riddled with thornbushes, poison ivy, and wet marsh grass that may as well be a giant placenta.

  Sloane was holding on to my ponytail, which was becoming looser and looser as a result. The first time I veered to avoid a branch I saw at the last minute, she was able to avoid it, too, but my ponytail completely came loose, and her second and third interactions with branches weren't as fortuitous.

  "Shit!" I screamed, trying to assist Mike in helping her get to her feet after her first tumble. Everyone in our family suffers from extreme lack of coordination and an immoderate amount of clumsiness. Even though this is a path Sloane and I had been down hundreds of times during broad daylight, the familiarity of it was completely lost on us. Add to the mix a wooded marshy path in the middle of the black night and you might as well have put us in a minefield with Bose headphones and a water gun.

  At the end of the path was a small wooden dock that took you over the marshiest part and fell out on the beach. Once on the beach, I started yelling Greg's name.

  "Greg! Greeeggg! Greg!"

  Sloane chimed in with screams of her own, and so did Mike, who was surprisingly becoming the forefront of Operation Seafood Tower Rescue.

  "We have to get out there. We need a boat," I told them.

  "We can take one of the dinghie
s," she said, shining the flashlight on a bunch of little rowboats that people used to get from the beach to their bigger boats.

  Mike grabbed the closest one, flipped it over, and pushed it into the water. It had two benches in the middle and a smaller bench on each end, and two sets of oars inside. The perfect mode of transportation if you were a family of midgets on The Amazing Race trying to make it through Willy Wonka's Chocolate River.

  I took control of the flashlight so Mike could grab the first set of oars and start rowing while Sloane took the other. After ten solid minutes of huffing and puffing and becoming completely dizzy, it occurred to us that we had made no progress at all and were in the same exact place we started.

  "Sloane!" Mike yelled. "You're supposed to be rowing forward like me, not canceling out my row!"

  "I can't see which way you're rowing!" They were seated with their backs to each other, and I was in the middle as the captain.

  I grabbed the oars out of her hands and started rowing myself.

  It was impossible to see anything beyond the three to four feet the flashlight illuminated, and impossible to tell if we were making any headway.

  "Chelsea, find a boat or landmark with the flashlight so we have a point of reference," Mike ordered.

  "Done. There's a red anchor buoy thingy right there."

  "They're all red, Chelsea. That doesn't help us!" Sloane screamed.

  "Then you find something, you big Mormon."

  Mike ordered us to just keep rowing in the same direction so that we would eventually make some progress in getting over to the other side. He also told us both to stop arguing and to focus on saving our brother from a dark, untimely death.

  Sloane decided it would be a good idea to come back to where I was seated at the end of the boat and supervise.

  "Get out of the back of the boat, you dumbass. It's gonna fill with water!" Before this sentence even left my mouth, Mike had fallen out of the boat, because half of it was already submerged in water. Sloane fell out next. I grabbed the front end of the rowboat while it got higher and higher but let go right before it capsized. Now we were all in the water with our flip-flops floating beside us. I took this opportunity to relieve myself.

  Mike had started swimming toward the dinghy and was trying to turn it back over.

  I looked at Sloane, who was treading water in a manner that suggested she wasn't going to be afloat for much longer. "You really are a dick," I told her as I swam over to her. She grabbed my shoulders, pushing my whole head underwater.

  "Sorry!" she yelped as I went down.

  I released her from my grip and swam back up to the surface. "What is wrong with you?"

  "I'm so tired. I think I have whiplash."

  "Well, I'm not a fucking flotation device. You can't just push on me and expect me to keep coming back up. You are so weak. Lie on your back, and I'll hold you. That's easier." We did just that, and I looked over to see where Mike was. I noticed that the water went from cool to lukewarm a little too quickly. "Are you peeing?"

  "Yes," Sloane answered. "But just for a second."

  "There's an oar!" I yelled to Mike.

  "I'm right here, just a minute." Mike was now visible, and I could see him dragging the dinghy back in our direction. Once over by us, he flipped the boat into its upright position. "Where are the oars?"

  "Fuck. I just saw one." I swam and grabbed what looked like an oar from farther away but turned out to be the flashlight. The dead, clearly non-waterproof flashlight.

  "Chelsea, can you please stop swearing?" Sloane said as her head sank under water.

  "Fuck off, Sloane. We need to find the oars. Greeeeegggggggg!!!!"

  Greg's first response came in the form of high-pitched squealing and what sounded like brooding laughter. It all felt eerily reminiscent of the movie Deliverance, but in a much nicer part of the country and with yachts.

  "Oh, my God! Is that him? Where are you? Are you okay?"

  It was Greg, and he was laughing in a singsong kind of way. "Hello, girls"... and then more creepy laughing.

  "Where are you?!" Sloane and I screamed in unison. There were echoes across the bay, so it was hard to decipher where his voice was coming from. The flashlight was useless, and our only sense of direction at this point came from Greg's maniacal laughing.

  Between Mike and me, we somehow managed to get Sloane back into the boat, face-first. "My nose!" she yelled as she landed. Had I been less high, I would have remembered the time she capsized a kayak with only herself in it. "You are by far the most useless person in this family."

  "You know what, Chelsea?" Mike chimed in. "We're all in this together. We need to focus on rescuing Greg. She's doing her best."

  I liked that Mike was defending my sister. She clearly wasn't able to defend herself. Mike was a good egg, and I liked a guy who didn't speak often but meant it when he did. And further, like Rihanna, I respect a guy who yells at me.

  "You're right, Mike." Then I smacked Sloane on the back of the head when he turned around.

  "Girls! Look out, look out wherever you are...," Greg sang.

  "We're almost there," Mike yelled back. He was now using one arm to row while I was rowing with an oar.

  We got close enough to hear Greg splashing in the water but were still unable to see him. "I'm right over here, dumbasses, on the dock." Greg was clearly enjoying this, and it dawned on me that I hadn't eaten in hours. I checked to see if my hip bone was protruding. Finally some good news. My thoughts drifted back to Large Luke, and I wondered if he had ever lived as a sea animal and felt his hip bone protrude. It seemed unlikely.

  "I think I see him," Sloane announced. "It's him."

  I craned my neck to try to see what she saw, then jumped into the water to swim over to him. "I'm in the water, give me your hand."

  Greg reached out to grab me out of the water and helped me up onto the dock. "Welcome, kids, how was your trip? Mike, how blown away are you by Sloane's maritime skills? She's a regular naval officer, don't you think?" Greg was his usual sarcastic, obnoxious self, and it was clear to all of us that this whole escapade had been a waste of everyone's time.

  I got up from where I was sitting on the edge of the dock, intending to slap Greg across the back of the head. That's when I saw that he was completely naked. That's also when I jumped back into the water. "You are so gross, Greg. He's naked, Sloane. Close your eyes."

  "Ew!"

  Mike had finally had enough of this voyage and was clearly exhausted from his captaining, and I heard him utter his first curse word: "This is a fucking joke."

  I grabbed Sloane, and we swam the short bit to the beach and stormed off into the dunes back to the house.

  "Girls, we're on Chappy!" Greg called, chasing after us. "Where do you think you're going? We have to go back to the other side."

  I had become so disoriented and tired that I didn't even know we had actually accomplished getting to the other side of the bay. Sloane slumped down in the sand and started to whimper. I looked down at her and told her to have some dignity. I took any anger I had left out on the culprit himself.

  "You're an asshole for swimming in the middle of the night. We thought something had happened to you. We shoplifted a fucking boat, you dickfucker."

  "Maybe you're the asshole, Chelsea, for swimming across a bay in Stage-Four Paranoia. I'm a big boy."

  "No, you're naked is what you are, and you're not coming back in our boat, because you're creeping me out. I don't like you, and I don't like what you're proposing."

  "I can't believe you're naked," Sloane said, covering her eyes and ears. "You are so disgusting."

  Mike turned the boat around while Greg led us back to the beach.

  "These are great mushrooms, Chelsea. This has probably been one of the best nights of my life."

  "Well, it's been the worst of mine," Sloane told him. "I'm telling Mom and Dad."

  "Telling them what, Sloane?" Mike asked, clearly annoyed. "No one is smart in this story. Everyone in
this scenario is wrong. You're an asshole, I'm a real asshole for being a party to this nonsense, Greg is obviously out of his mind, and Chelsea is about two Saturday nights away from being Anna Nicole Smith."

  "I'm not wrong," Sloane declared. "I was trying to help my sister save my brother's life."

  "Oh, shut up, Sloane," I told her. "At least we're on mushrooms. What's your excuse?"

  Everyone was wiped out except for Greg, who was humming the whole way back to our beach. I felt like I had competed in some sort of Ironman competition and came in after the last person. I hadn't experienced this kind of exhaustion since I'd auditioned for a Nike commercial where they asked me on the spot to choreograph my own workout routine, then promptly suggested that I take ballroom dancing classes at the Learning Annex.

  By the time we reached land, my pupils felt like they were going to pop out of my eyes and walk back home alone. We returned the dinghy to its original place, minus one oar, and we all trudged deliriously up to the house.

  When we finally walked into the kitchen, the clock said 2:12 A.M. Ray was asleep on the couch we last saw him on, with the television still blaring and a fan about six inches from his face. He looked up when we shut the door, looked at his watch, and looked at us all standing there like rape victims. Then he rolled over and went back to sleep.

  I woke up the next day around eleven and went downstairs. My father and Ray were both at the kitchen table discussing how embarrassing the Mets were and if in fact the two of them should change teams.

  "Where is everyone?" I asked.

  "Oh, everyone left to go swim across to Chappy to see if Greg drowned again," Ray said, shaking his head. "You're worse than the Mets."

  My father looked up from the paper. "Who's worse than the Mets?"

  Greg walked in from outside and planted himself at the kitchen counter, where he began to prepare himself a turkey sandwich. Then he took out a tub of coleslaw from the fridge and set it down between his half-made sandwich and the blender. "Chelsea," he asked as his darted back and forth between the coleslaw and the blender, "can I interest you in a coleslaw smoothie?"

  My father took off his glasses. "A coleslaw smoothie? I'll try one of those."