Barrelhouse Reviews: Now You Are a Missing Person by Susan Hayden

Reviewed by Diane Gottlieb

Moon Tide Press / May 2023 / 162 pp

She had me at the very start: “I’m an unreliable narrator but I’m asking you to trust me anyway.” Who could resist this provocative first sentence, at once both confession and invitation? Susan Hayden’s Now You Are a Missing Person is a remarkable hybrid memoir built with a combination of short prose and poetry. The opening piece, “Outlaws,” sets the tone for the collection. The reader stands in line at the post office with five-year-old Hayden as she admires the photos lining the wall, pictures of “the best-looking men on Ventura Boulevard.” When she asks her mom what TV show they’re from, she learns the photos are “mugshots,” and that each of the men had committed serious crimes. But that does not diminish their stature in young Hayden’s eyes: “They were scruffy and real, and I hated anything that was shiny and anyone who was polished.”

Thus we are introduced to our not-so-unreliable and very relatable narrator. What follows is her journey, one filled with attempts to escape all that’s polished and shiny around her, a journey that leads to hard-earned wisdom, and ultimately, to a place not too far from home. Along the way, we’re treated to a delicious taste of life in the Southern California of the 1970s and beyond. We brush up against the famous and wannabe famous (including Bob Weir and Jerry Garcia, Harry Dean Stanton, and Richard Simmons, among others). We rock to the music of the day, and sway to Hayden’s beautiful lyricism.

In the moving poem “1971 Was a Bad Year for Certain People,” Hayden describes her father, an entertainment attorney who “lionized Judaism” and was physically present but emotionally absent.   His favorite song was The Doors’ “Riders on the Storm,” which he saw as a “form of Kaddish” and which often blasted throughout her home. The day Jim Morrison dies, Hayden visits The Third Eye (the store she describes as her father’s favorite “spot”). Another young girl she meets at the store takes a POW/MIA bracelet off her own wrist and gives it to Hayden, who makes a connection between these events and her relationship with her father: “Later, when the bracelet is next to my skin, / alone with the lifeblood of this veteran and the absence of Jim, / I could only envision my father, who was disappeared / in a different form.”

While reading, I sometimes wanted to jump onto the page, grab young Hayden by the shoulders, and shout, “No! Don’t go there! Don’t do that!” I wished to protect her from choices I knew would never work out well. I felt this deeply during the poem “I Wanted Him,” the “him” being “this guy who sliced deli meat into cold cuts/at Encino Deli.”  Hayden writes:

I wanted him:
even as it hurt in his bed …

I wanted him:
though his girlfriend stared
at us
from her senior portrait …

I wanted him:
all because
when he’d stare at me
from behind that counter
I felt seen.

Oh, what we will do to be seen!

Hayden doesn’t need me to save her. She has an inner strength that shows up when she needs it. Hayden writes about this in “The Beautiful Ugly,” a gorgeous tribute to her friend Kimmi, who dies by suicide at age forty-two: “There was always this part of me, call it my core, an inner strength, a knowing that I would be okay no matter what. There was always this part of her, call it her core: a knowing that she would never feel safe, never find love, never soar.” 

Hayden writes powerfully about loss in later sections, as well—the end of a long-term, albeit unhealthy relationship; the death of her father; and, tragically, the sudden death of her first husband Chris, with whom she shared a son. It is Hayden’s fortitude—and the psychics she visits—that get her through. Hayden also writes about Library Girl, a monthly show she puts together at the Ruskin Group Theater in Santa Monica, highlighting the work of poets, writers, and singer-songwriters. The idea of Library Girl sprung from a tribute show for Chris that took place one year after he died—a striking example of making art from pain.

Throughout this personal collection, Hayden weaves pieces that explore race and religion. We learn her mother’s philosophy of life and love, and while Hayden’s relationship with her father was complicated, we witness tender moments between them, too. In “Instead of Observing the Sabbath,” Hayden describes the trips she and her father would take to Neiman Marcus on Saturdays, where they would indulge in free samples of gourmet food: “We gorged on caramel corn and rumaki. / He’d peel the bacon off. / We bonded over food. / We argued about religion. … He was Santa Claus crossed with Nachman of Breslov.”

Now You Are a Missing Person is a California book. And somewhat of a period piece. It’s very father-daughter—and very funny: Hayden’s writing has an often humorous, feisty edge. It’s a wonderful coming of age(s) story, a celebration of life and resilience, and, even with all its sadness, a memoir full of hope. Mostly, though, Hayden’s is story about growing, growing pains, and the bumpy paths many of us must take before learning that we were always enough.

Diane Gottlieb is the editor of Awakenings: Stories of Body & Consciousness (ELJ Editions) and the Prose/CNF editor of Emerge Literary Journal. Her writing appears or is forthcoming in Brevity, Witness, Colorado Review, River Teeth, Florida Review, SmokeLong Quarterly, Best Microfiction, The Rumpus, and many other lovely places. She is the winner of Tiferet Journal’s 2021 Writing Contest in nonfiction, longlisted at 2023’s Wigleaf Top 50, a finalist for The Florida Review’s 2023 Editor’s Prize for Creative Nonfiction, and a finalist for the 2024 Porch Prize in the nonfiction category. Find her at dianegottlieb.com and @DianeGotAuthor.