Curt, a college professor, lives with his lover of several years, a pediatrician of Chinese descent named Lee. Eager to write, he receives a grant to take the summer off and work on a novel. Then Lee's mother calls -- she wants to visit. Curt is eager to meet her but Lee isn't so sure ... she's of a different generation, a different culture even, and doesn’t speak much English. Still, Curt insists.<br><br>But when Mrs. Gui arrives, Curt finds himself struggling with writer’s block. He feels like an outsider in his own home when Lee and his mother converse in Cantonese, leaving him out of the conversation, and even his sex life suffers with her in the bedroom next to theirs. Can Curt and Mrs. Gui move past their cultural differences to see that they both love Lee and have his best interests at heart?

Just What the Doctor Ordered

A little after four o’clock I found my rhythm and the story started to flow in me like a frozen stream beginning to thaw. I pounded out a half dozen pages at a furious pace, time slipping away from me in my inspired haze. I didn’t hear the car pull up into the drive or the steps on the porch, the opening of the door. “Curt?” Lee called out, his voice barely breaking through my fevered mind. “We’re home.”


“Be right down,” I told him as I finished up the sentence I was on. My head ached with the rest of the story, words forming themselves into paragraphs of thought inside my head, aching to spill out into the keyboard. Vaguely, I heard the heavy thud of luggage set on the floor, a low conversation in clipped tones that I couldn’t understand, my lover on the steps. 


Saving my work, I clicked off the computer just as Lee entered the study. “I’m coming,” I said.


He took in my flushed cheeks, the excitement in my eyes, and his frown disappeared. “I love to see you like this.” 


Chapter 13