The Truths Behind the Life of Maeve Sun Lively

58

INSTEAD OF REALLY GOING ANYWHERE, having some kind of crazy day where we might end up sleeping under the vast stars; I am ditching my workday for a conversation I did not think would ever happen with Cameron and Mason. It was not going well.

"Why in the world did you not tell me this?" Cameron was leaning half of his weight on the kitchen counter, his thumb and index finger rubbing at the bridge of his nose while his eyes flustered shut in frustration. I was starting to notice that more and more, a habit he does when he's stressed, something he only started doing recently.

Mason, who was standing a few feet away from Cameron, looked like he's both scared and eager to go close to his lover. "I didn't really have time, and I thought it wasn't a big deal."

His fingers leave his face and he glares at Mason. "Not a big deal? Of course it's a big deal!"

"Fine, I'm sorry alright? Is that what you want to hear? I'm sorry." Mason opens a cabinet with cups and glasses, he takes one crystal glass and slams the cabinet shut. I felt it vibrate through me; and moving out of his way, he fills the glass up with some water and downs it in a furious gulp. Before whatever trip Mason had made for business, he never talked back to Cameron, or really anyone. But seeing him slam that cabinet and the way he immediately defended himself was odd. Cameron noticed too.

"Hey," he walked over to Mason, voice softening. "I guess...okay, you know I don't like to admit things like this but...I guess I was just mad at the fact that you never told me because I thought you don't trust me. I guess it was petty. But why didn't you tell me you had been looking for your mother? I could have helped, in any way I can."

Gently this time, Mason sets his glass down on the counter and digs his hand through his hair, brows stressed. "God, I don't know what happened back there. That wasn't me. I apologize." He glances from me to Cameron, where we both nod an accepting sort of smile back. "I had been meaning to find my mother, or father, except I was going to do that after this business thing got more stable." He waves his hands at nothing in particular. "The thing is, I didn't find her. She found me."

I took a seat at the kitchen island and felt the awkwardness of this whole conversation sink in.

The next thing we knew, we were all sitting around an untouched lunch while Mason talked about everything that has happened and how his mother found him.

This world can be so small sometimes yet at the same time you can also miss a person you've been looking for across the street or some sort. Mason's mother, Mary Qiu, also 秋日葵 (Qiu Ri Kui), was a forty-five year old producer/screenplay writer. Apparently, she's pretty popular in the screenplay world around New York and back in Beijing, having also made several collaborations with famous and well known films. She had Mason when she was seventeen, and she gave him up because she wasn't ready to be a mother, being so young and half in school. Years passed, and when she could stand on two legs with a stable roof over her head, she was somehow too "scared" to contact Mason.

I didn't like that part, obviously. But Mason didn't seem to mind, he said he could "understand" and how rough it was for her back then. I don't think Cameron thought the same though. Well, we kept quiet and let him finish.

So she's now looking for him, and when she finds Mason, she was so proud and in tears that Mason described it as the most heart aching moment in his life. "It almost felt like taking a breath for the first time," was what he said, which I thought was a little dramatic.

They spent a lot of time together, and Mary even contributed to helping him and Juno out, extending their social circles and introducing them to well built film, acting, music, and even modeling, management companies. Putting in a good word here and there, all of it. It sounded so grand, doesn't it? And as Mason spoke, he had a sort of spark in his eyes that he never had before. It took me a moment to realize what it was. And I looked at Cameron along the way, at the same time, I think he realized it too. Hope.

He was chuckling about something his mother said. "And you know what she said when I told her about this one time when I was wasted for the first time?" He glanced at Cameron, a wide grin placed on, and Cameron forces one back while seeming to swallow down a frown. "She said, 'oh, well I won't be too surprised. I guess genes do pass down!' And I laughed so hard at that!"

"So why did she decide to come look for you after all this time when she was too scared to do that?" I suddenly asked, the first time speaking since we sat down. Mason's smile dawned a little, puzzled.

"Uh, because I'm her son? Isn't that sort of obvious?" He locks eyes with me, no longer wandering his gaze towards Cameron with dreamy eyes. I think without really noticing, his eyes were narrowing down on me, the nearest hints of a smile left disappearing. "Maeve, if you have something, say it alright."

My eyes don't falter at first, but then, I break away contact and feel myself trying to put on a goddamn smile for the sake of everything. How many times have I had to do that? Just put on a smile.

"Nothing. I don't have anything to say." I finally managed to look at him, smiling almost naturally even though the thought of keeping it up was hard, doing it somehow wasn't. "I'm just too happy for you. That's all."

At last, he stopped his cold look he had somehow developed, and it was so much more lovelier to see him smile again. Imagine a land of ice, then, the sun comes out and all that ice melts away to reveal the summer grass that has been hiding under all that frozen water. That's what it felt like, to see him smile again.

"Thank you, well, I told her about basically everything. I think you guys should meet her."

Cameron nods, placing on all his acting skills and scooting his chair closer to Mason's, planting a kiss on his cheek. "Of course. Say a time, and meeting Ms. Qiu it is." At that, Mason answered him with such happiness, I needed to get away.

When I was finally away from earshot, I could feel all of that sudden weariness slowly start to drain into nothing but a small scratch in the back of my head. But there was that feeling, I knew. I felt it so well, it wasn't going to just go away.

This woman just comes into his life, and maybe I don't get it because I never had a mother love me like that. Maybe I was jealous. Maybe I couldn't see him be happy with his mother just because he suddenly had something I didn't have, suddenly had something that made him happy which I didn't give or help with. A happiness I couldn't offer.

After lingering around the sitting room for a bit and just looking out the window at their well kept garden, Cameron comes to stand next to me, exhaling a way too obvious sigh.

I glance at him, not really trying on a smile anymore. "Let me guess, you're now standing next to me instead of talking to your boyfriend because..."

"Of course to give me the chance to talk to my girlfriend!"

His wide and sort of unnatural grin stammers when I don't laugh.

He tilts his head at me, eyes going behind his eyelids at that exaggerated eye roll. "Fine, it seems like Mary Qiu is calling her boy, and he'd rather go talk to her than me." When I feel my face fall, even though by the sound of how he put it, I knew he was saying it in hopes of bringing some kind of laugh to the both of us, he quickly adds; "I'm happy for him, you know? I mean, from his words, it sounds like his mother is way better than the one I have." He huffs at that, looking away and staring at some spot outside in his garden.

"He really looks happy. Happier than I've ever seen him I think."

"Yeah. But," he turns to me, "it just doesn't feel all too right. I just..." his eyes stared at me but his mind was somewhere else, and I felt it too. Whatever he was going to say, I somehow knew it already. "You know what, I'm being a little bitch, aren't I? I should just be happy for Mase." He swats his hands in the air, like waving all of this nonsense feeling we were having away. It didn't feel exactly like nonsense though.

I pull my arms up and stretch all of my limbs out while Cameron continues to gaze out his window. Maybe because there was nowhere else to look. "No, you're not being a little bitch. And yes, you should be happy for Mason. I should too. But whoever this Mary Qiu is, she better not do something that will..."

We both take in a deep inhale.

"I just hope she is the right person to be in his life."

Sometimes these days when I find other people to blame other than just myself, I wonder about Mary Qiu. If she never came into Mason's life, can anything that has happened later in the years ever be undone?