Free Among the Missing by Dan Chaon

“If I told you that I had periods when I … lost time … wouldn’t you be concerned? Wouldn’t you want me to see a doctor?”
    “You’re blowing this all out of proportion,” I said. “It’s nothing like that.” And I wanted to tell her about the things that the Detective had read about in the weeks and months following the first incident—about trances and transcendental states, about astral projection and out-of-body travel. But I didn’t.
    “There’s nothing wrong with me,” I said, and stretched my arms luxuriously. “I feel great,” I said. “It’s more like daydreaming. Only—a little different.”
    But she still looked concerned. “You don’t have to hide anything from me,” she said. “I just care about you, that’s all.”
    “I know,” I said, and I smiled as her eyes scoped my face. “It’s nothing,” I said, “just one of those little quirks!” And that is what I truly believe. Though my loved ones sometimes tease me about my distractedness, my forgetfulness, they do so affectionately. There haven’t been any major incidents, and the only times that really worry me are the times when I am alone, when I am driving down one street and wake up on another. And even then, I am sure that nothing terrible has happened. I sometimes rub my hands against the steering wheel. I am always intact. There are no screams or sirens in the distance. It’s just one of those things!
    But back then, that first time, I was frightened. I remember asking my mother how a person would know if he had a brain tumor.
    “You don’t have a brain tumor,” she said irritably. “It’s time for bed.”
    A little later, perhaps feeling guilty, she came up to my room with aspirin and water.
    “Do you have a headache, honey?” she said.
    I shook my head as she turned off my bedside lamp. “Too much reading of comic books,” she said, and smiled at me exaggeratedly, as she sometimes did, pretending I was still a baby. “It would make anybody’s head feel funny, little man!” She touched my forehead with the cold, dry pads of her fingertips, looking down into my eyes, heavily. She looked sad, and for a moment lost her balance slightly as she reached down to run a palmacross my cheek. “Nothing is wrong,” she whispered. “It will all seem better in the morning.”
    That night, I sat up writing in my diary, writing to Big Me:
I hope you are alive
, I wrote.
I hope that I don’t die before you are able to read this
.
    That particular diary entry always makes me feel philosophical. I’m not entirely sure of the person he is writing to, the future person he was imagining. I don’t know whether that person is alive or not. There are so many people we could become, and we leave such a trail of bodies through our teens and twenties that it’s hard to tell which one is us. How many versions do we abandon over the years? How many end up nearly forgotten, mumbling and gasping for air in some tenement room of our consciousness like elderly relatives suffering some fatal lung disease?
    Like the Detective. As I wander through my big suburban house at night, I can hear his wheezing breath in the background, still muttering about secrets that can’t be named. Still hanging in there.
    My wife is curled up on the sofa, sipping hot chocolate, reading, and when she looks up she smiles shyly. “What are you staring at?” she says. She is used to this sort of thing, by now—finds it endearing, I think. She is a pleasant, practical woman, and I doubt that she would find much of interest in the many former selves that tap against my head like moths.
    She opens her robe. “See anything you like?” she says, and I smile back at her.
    “Just peeking,” I say brightly. My younger self wouldn’t recognize me, I’m sure of that.
    •   •   •
    Which makes me wonder: What did I see in Mickleson, beyond the striking resemblance? I can’t quite remember my train of thought, though it’s clear from the diary