Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang Read online

  "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