Among the Missing (Dan Chaon) by Dan Chaon

Author:Dan Chaon
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9780307481443
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2011-09-20T21:00:00+00:00

Looking back, I wish that I’d gone about finding answers in a more systematic way. I don’t even know if “answers” were what I was looking for at the time. Mostly, I was thinking of myself—where would I be at thirty-two, forty-five, fifty-five? How did people go about falling in love, getting married, having jobs, families, living their lives? I wanted to frame my parents’ lives like scripts—plot, conflict, motivation, theme—anything that could be easily analyzed, anything that might give me a clue about how to proceed, or how not to.

Perhaps this was what I thought of as my mother and I sat on the deck, as we often did on hot nights. We sat, smoking cigarettes, staring out at the dark shape of the lake—at the lights of houses on the other side, at the soft brightening and dimming of fireflies in the air, which reminded me of the way the lit end of her cigarette would glow more intensely when she breathed in, and fade when she exhaled.

I can’t remember that we talked, though we must have. Perhaps we spoke of the weather, or whatever mundane daily activities we’d gone about; maybe we joked about the “news” in those supermarket tabloids she liked to read. I believe that was the year Princess Grace of Monaco died, in her own mysterious car accident. We might have discussed that.

But it was the things that we didn’t talk about that seemed most present. I wanted to know what she really thought of me; what had really happened between her and my father; what she was going to do with her life now. But it was as if we were deep underwater—those conversations drifted over the surface, far above us, like the rippling shadows of rafts and swimmers that fish might notice, and startle at.

I said, “So … what are your plans for the year?”

“Oh,” she said, and sighed. “I don’t have any idea. I’ll probably just do the same old thing. Live here in the house, take care of your dad’s books, and try to get by.”

She was silent, as if the process of “getting by” were fraught with secret perils. A couple of kids came running along her stretch of beach, laughing and calling out, their flashlights bobbing like will-o’-the-wisps. We watched as they ran off toward the spot where the bodies were discovered. The lights dipped and swayed as the kids ran past, growing smaller in the distance.

“That part of the beach is going to be haunted,” I said. “Don’t you think?”

“What do you mean?” she said sharply.

“Oh, you know,” I said. “The way people make things up. When something like that happens.”

“Hmm,” she said suspiciously. “Well, that’s the way people are,” she said. “Full of stupidity.” She looked at me as if I might be one of them, a spy from the world of the ignorant. She tilted her head back and breathed out a long trail of smoke. “I don’t think about it,” she told me, firmly, and frowned.

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