Chapter 11 #2
a while since we’ve come here together.” His voice was soft. “It’s been a while since we’ve done anything together.”
“Yes,” Iris conceded. “You would say that I’m to blame for that.”
Wayward turned to her. “Mom, let’s not start. I really did come here to make peace. Once upon a time, who was closer than
you and me? And now that I might become a father . . .”
“Might?” Iris asked, her tone startled. She glanced back at him. “Are you having second thoughts?”
Wayward let out a long breath. “There is a second thought I do have. I know that this baby was your idea all along. Why did
you give up your future grandchild to Roses?”
Iris’s eyes widened. “How do you know that? Who told you?”
“Nothing nefarious,” Wayward replied. “My colleague Bessie overheard you and Roses at the office. But that’s beside the point.”
Iris looked down. “What’s your point, then?”
Wayward crossed his arms over his chest. “Why do you always kowtow to Roses when it comes to me? Why do you always let her
win?”
Iris looked back at her father’s mausoleum. “She’s the matriarch of our family, and she’s your boss,” she replied quietly.
Wayward shook his head. “I don’t buy it. That’s not the mother I grew up with. No, it’s like Roses won me from you. Or is
it because when I came out . . .?” He cleared his throat. “Mom, is it because when I came out, you didn’t want me anymore?”
He cleared his throat again, his eyes blinking rapidly as he tried to maintain his composure.
With a gasp, Iris reached out and pulled Wayward to her. “Never, Weiwei!” she exclaimed. “How could I not want my own son?”
She threw her arms around him, holding him tight.
Wayward at first stiffened, but then melted into his mother’s embrace. He could not remember the last time they’d hugged.
“First Dad left, then he lost your inheritance. Everything seemed to go downhill from there for us.” He rested his chin on
her head. “I know I have blame in that. Getting addicted to that stuff and going to rehab. I didn’t know how to process him
leaving.”
Iris pulled back to look at him. “I wasn’t there for you during that time. I have blame in that too, Weiwei.”
“Mom, I need you going forward. Becoming a father. Becoming president of Sunfang Global. How can I do it alone?”
Iris nodded. “Yes, it won’t be easy. Your vision for Sunfang Global is already so controversial within the company. And providing an heir for the Sunfang Trust is going to stir up a lot of trouble in our family.”
Wayward nodded. “So you will help me? I actually have an idea about how to give Roses what she wants without hurting April.”
Iris nodded. “Weiwei, even if it may not seem like it, I have always been helping you over these years.”
At this, Wayward frowned. “You’re right that it hasn’t seemed like it, Mom. Where have you been all these years? Why are you
always gone? Why are you always disappearing? Please tell me, finally!”
Iris clenched her eyes shut, unable to meet Wayward’s probing eyes. Her whole body began to tremble as a deeply rooted trauma
wormed its way out of her. With a quivering finger, she pointed at the mausoleum and began to weep.
“I’ve been searching for my father!” the woman sobbed.
Wayward was aghast. “What are you talking about?”
Clutching her heart to her chest, Iris took a deep breath, swallowing her pain back down, forcing herself into composure.
She wiped away the tears. “After Big Boss Sun passed away, you remember the disagreement that Roses and I had over where to
bury him? It was such a mess.”
Wayward nodded in slow realization. He remembered how Roses and Iris had wrested his remains back and forth via literal planes,
trains, and automobiles, from Los Angeles to Shanghai to Taipei and back, in an epic tug-of-war that lasted many weeks.
“A logistical mess on a planetary scale,” he whispered.
“Yes. And then, at some point, your Auntie Hyacinth offered to hold onto his ashes until we figured it out. But that’s when
we realized . . . We realized . . .!” Iris could not finish the sentence.
They could never say exactly when or where. Those ashes, which had been carefully sealed in a priceless Ming Dynasty urn of a Confuciusly inconspicuous dark bronze, had been passed through countless hands over innumerable miles by fleets of transportation services owned by the Sun Clan.
With Sunfang Global’s reach, the misplaced urn could have truly ended up literally anywhere. Big Boss Sun had vanished into
thin air.
“You lost track of his remains,” Wayward said quietly, turning to stare at the mausoleum. “His grave is empty. And this entire
time, all these years, you’ve been searching for him.” He shook his head in astonishment.
Iris still could not speak. She hung her head low. Losing her father’s ashes? Denying the great man a proper burial to honor
him as their patriarch? She might as well had killed him too. Her shame was deadlier than cancer. It was a shame that fundamentally
warps a person.
“There’s something I don’t understand,” Wayward said. “Roses is just as responsible as you are for what happened. Why are
you the one carrying all the blame and doing all the searching?” His voice was suddenly tense.
“As the eldest, your Auntie Roses should have always been the one in charge of his arrangements,” Iris said as she put her
sunglasses back on. “I got involved, and because of that, the ashes were lost. It is my fault, and my fault only.”
Then Wayward glared at her, a habitual anger overtaking him. “That’s bullshit, Mom. And it’s because of this blind deference
to Roses that you disappeared from my life for all these years. To what? To chase a ghost! I’m sorry your dad died, but you
abandoned me just when I needed you the most!”
Iris’s voice rose as well as she recoiled from him. “Yes, I made a choice back then, Weiwei, but I am here now!”
Wayward shook his head as he turned away. “I think it’s too late, Mom.”
Frantic, Iris grabbed at his arm, trying to pull him back. “Don’t say that. You wanted to know the truth, and I told you.
Don’t punish me for it!”
Wayward let out a long sigh, looking up at the sky.
“Mom, I don’t blame you for anything. It’s just that I can’t trust you.
The way your generation thinks, how you betray your own kids because of patriarchy and dying traditions .
. . Who’s to say that you won’t abandon me again when I need you?
” He gently untangled his arm from hers and walked away without looking back.
Iris watched her son until he disappeared over a hill dotted with gravestones, then she sank to the ground. Hopelessly, she
stared back at the empty mausoleum.
As she sat there for many minutes more, her mind blank with dismay, the daylight found its way to Wayward’s bouquet of sunflowers.
Bathed in the afternoon rays, the buds sprang open, revealing their neon-yellow petals and golden-brown centers that stared
back at Iris like a chorus of wide eyes.
Iris stood up, resolved that nothing would change. Whether Wayward wanted it or not, she was going to help him.
For the last few years of Big Boss Sun’s life, he’d thought Sunbern was an unnamed soldier.
Oh, you’re back from the war! Big Boss Sun would say heartily whenever his elder grandson came to visit. The old patriarch would clap Sunbern on the shoulders,
giving him a hero’s welcome, pulling out the good brandy and fumbling in his desk for Cuban cigars so ancient they were crumbling
to dust.
For the longest time, Sunbern kept trying to correct the old man. “No, Big Boss, it’s me, your grandson Isaac!” he would say,
using his real name while trying to keep his voice chipper even though he was sinking inside. “C’mon, I’m Hyacinth’s kid!
No army would ever accept me!”
But his grandfather would stare back at him blankly, then shake his head slowly but surely. No, of course you are. Be proud of your service, comrade! And he would say this with a certain finite tone that meant it was not up for discussion.
When Sunbern asked his mother, Hyacinth, who this mystery soldier might be, she had just shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe he’s remembering a movie and getting confused.”
But Sunbern knew that whoever this soldier was, he was a real person from Big Boss Sun’s life. The way his grandfather looked
into his eyes, Sunbern could feel a real human connection there, a thread from the past that had unraveled and become mistakenly
entangled with him, but it was a real thread nevertheless. This was a thread of genuine affection from the old man which few
people beyond Sunbern could appreciate.
No one was ever willing to admit it, but of all the Sun cousins, the half-white rebel Sunbern was Big Boss Sun’s favorite.
Hence these final visits with his grandfather were hard for Sunbern, who was in his early twenties at the time and at the
peak of his modeling career. Even though he had defied his control freak Aunt Roses and set off to forge his own path outside
of the Sunfang empire, Sunbern had always enjoyed Big Boss Sun’s favor. The patriarch was proud of his dashing and fiercely
independent progeny, who he had helped Hyacinth raise. Sure, Roses had cut Sunbern out of the family money—that frigid bitch
always had hated him for no reason—but as if to make up for it, Big Boss Sun always packed Sunbern’s pockets with wads and
wads of hundreds whenever his elder grandson came to see him.
So when Big Boss Sun began to lose his mind, Sunbern knew that his place in the Sun Clan was endangered. His tenuous standing
was fading away, along with the patriarch’s lucidity.
Eight years ago was the last time Sunbern and his grandfather spoke, a few months before the old man slipped into his terminal
coma. Sunbern had driven to Big Boss Sun’s log cabin sanctuary up in the San Bernardino Mountains. Once there, he’d rummaged
around until he found a stack of dusty family portrait books.
Big Boss Sun was signing voided checks in his office when Sunbern strode in, gruffly dropping the photographs onto the desk.