When You Were Here

we communicate? We don’t need the Internet. We have a town crier right here in Santa Monica, and her name is Mrs. Callahan—she must have told Kate.
    I open the door for Kate, and she is pissed. I guess my statute of limitations has run out with her.
    “I know you hit that car on purpose, Danny,” she says, and her voice is loud. She is supposed to be my surrogate mom now or something. She played that role a few times the last couple years, like when my mom was at one of her treatments. My mom wasn’t down for the count often, though. She was tough; she tried hard to get well. You don’t hang on for five years unless you want to live. She wanted to live so badly, she visited Mexico and Greece and Japan many times, seeking out Western doctors and then Easternmedicine and then anything to try to live. But she came up two months short of her goal. Sixty lousy days. Kate’s her best friend and has been since they went to college together. Kate also happens to be the mother of the girl I lost my virginity to. The girl who was mine for three perfect months last summer, and who then left my life without a reason, with barely a call.
    Holland.
    The most incredible and the most vexing person I know. It is unspoken, but deeply understood, that Kate and I don’t discuss her daughter. If we were to talk about Holland, I’d never be able to talk to Kate about anything else.
    I shrug. “So?”
    “Why did you hit a car on purpose, Danny?”
    Kate is a tiny person. She’s maybe five feet tall, but she’s a pit bull, and the muscles on her arms are sick. She works out every day, which is not unusual in Los Angeles, granted, but it’s where she works out that’s telling. She works out at Animal House, which is this very macho, very old, very broken-down gym without air-conditioning. The clientele is mostly Arnold Wannabes and guys just out of jail.
    “I don’t know.” I walk to the sliding-glass door and open it. Kate follows me. Sandy Koufax does too, then noses a Frisbee on the grass. I pick it up. It has teeth marks etched along the surface. It’s purple and says FIGHT CANCER. A lot of good that did. I throw it far into the yard, around the edge of the pool. Sandy Koufax is like a rocket—she chases it, catches up to it, leaps and grabs.
    This dog might be the definition of perfect.
    “So you did hit it on purpose?”
    “Define on purpose .”
    “With intention,” she says crisply.
    “Yes, then. I did.”
    “What would your mother think?”
    I throw the purple disk to Sandy Koufax again. She executes another excellent catch.
    “Hard to say,” I answer. “But let’s be honest. She was never a big car person. She always said walking was healthier, so maybe she’d have been glad.”
    Kate narrows her eyes. “Not funny.”
    “But true. It is true,” I add, and Kate doesn’t answer because she knows how my mom felt about cars. My mom was one of the few people in LA who walked anywhere. I toss the Frisbee again. Sandy Koufax leaps, easily clearing three feet on the vertical. “Sweet! Did you see that, Kate? That is one fine dog.”
    I’ll have to see if UCLA will let me have a dog in my dorm. Maybe I’ll get an orphan exception .
    Kate holds out her hands. “What am I supposed to do with you?”
    I don’t answer. There is no answer.
    “Fine,” Kate says, giving in. Her voice softens. “Just give me the insurance info. Give me the name of the claims adjuster, and I’ll make sure everything is taken care of.”
    Kate is kind of like a wizard. Give her a shirt with a grease stain from last year. She’ll get it out. Give her a pairof broken eyeglasses. She’ll come back with a new pair free of charge because she’ll convince the store it was owed to her. I give her my insurance info, and I know, in a day or two, this will all be taken care of. She’s the fixer, and she likes it like that.
    Her jaw is no longer set hard; her eyes are no longer narrowed. I’m in the clear. “Hey, Kate. Can you also call UCLA and see if I can bring a dog with me in the fall? If they allow that?”
    “Of course. We’ll get that dog on campus, no problem,” she says, the look in her eyes softening as she reaches up to give me a kiss on the forehead. I let her, then I throw the Frisbee again to Sandy Koufax, and then again, and then one more time, and at some point Kate leaves, she may even hug me, she may even tell me she loves me, she may even say she’s sorry that life sucks, but I’m lost in the