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

She stood in the doorway, unmoving, expectant. I tried a different approach. “Look, creativity is like a…a fountain, or a geyser really. A geyser. Do you know what they are?” 


No response, just that unwavering, unnerving stare. I found myself stammering. “They’re hot springs that shoot up out of the earth. Writing is like that. I get an idea but it has to boil beneath the surface for a while until it’s ready to come out. Only when it doescome, it’s intermittent, short bursts some days, whole rivers the next. It’s not a faucet you can turn on and off at will. I can’t control it. I write when I can, when I’m inspired, not when I want to. Do you understand?”


I could tell she didn’t. Her eyes were wide and hard, the immovable gaze of a statue. 


“A half hour,” I told her. It seemed a fair enough compromise to me. “Give me thirty minutes to wrap this up and then I’ll take you to the store. Promise.”


Chapter 25