Under those cafe tables, L pinched her belly between both hands to demonstrate her weight gain. I baked a Betty Crocker Cherry-Chip SuperMoist with coconut frosting this morning and ate the whole thing, she moaned, or Last night I drank a quart of Hawaiian Punch. I told her not to buy sweet drinks and cake mix. But she did, and gambled at the racetrack and got $200 haircuts and adopted cats then gave them back.

And through it all: her mom.

I never met L's mom, who lived 3,000 miles away in a palatial home in a place I believe is paradise. L never said "my mother," just "my mom," and always in the same rise-and-fall tone, starting out baby-soft, like someone eating angel cake, then languorously rolling out the O to the verge of a second syllable. Then the M: Bang, but trailing off as if in wonder, like the M in "bomb" or "doom."

"My mom says my sisters are mad at me because I sent cheap Christmas cards."

"My mom says when I changed my major to English from pre-med, she lost hope."

"My mom says she won't pay my rent until I tell my dad to stop having affairs."

I never met L's mom but saw her, once, from far away. She was visiting L. I walked past the house and saw someone in the window who looked like a picture of L sketched with dull pastels: the former Miss Yoshiko Kato.

L's parents had raised L and her sisters in that palace with its terraced garden spilling down a slope that overlooked a sapphire sea. Velvety honey-scented petals drifted past L's windowscreen. She almost never went outside. She read Tess D'Urbervilles over and over in bed, stir-fried Spam and onions by her side.

L's mom told her four daughters what she thought their best features were. To each of the other three she cited several, but to L she said, "Just your kissable lips." Thus she never hung photographs of L anywhere in that house, or so L told me, and why would she lie?

I met L during our last term at Berkeley. L read seven books a week. Her mom called at least once a day. She called daily after L graduated, became a librarian, quit, then wrote a thriller with an Asian-American gymnastic-star heroine. L's mom called daily after L acquired a literary agent who asked for revisions (surfing scenes, and make the heroine bilingual) but after a year of striving could not sell the book. L wrote another, featuring a devout Buddhist android, during which her mom called daily. This too did not sell.

L's mom called daily, so she called the day L drove over her landlord's garden and he billed her.

"Jews love money," L said.

It slipped out the way toddlers sometimes cuss.

"They do?" I barked, my head suddenly very hot.

"My mom says so," said L.

When L repeated awful things her mother said, she spoke them in her own voice. Never for the sake of drama did L imitate her mother's voice or add her own remarks, such as That bitch. L simply repeated her mother's words, then broke off, large eyes darting in a way that made me think of miners trapped underground after a collapse. Into a microphone dropped down the shaft the miners speak, but just for company, knowing they will never be rescued.

L told me what her mother said because she knew that mine also said awful things to me. L knew I also got the kind of phone call that makes you want to drown in a lake. L knew I would never tell her (as others did) to cut off contact with her mother. I would never tell L to declare her independence, as I could never declare my own. Instead, I advised L to answer only half those calls. Cell phones did not exist yet. So she could pretend not to be home.

Stop asking her for money, I said. Stop needing her money, because L was always wanting things for which her mother almost always paid, with strings: Help your sister apply for college, or no car.

I said, Don't tell her much about yourself. It worked for me.

"My mom said I shouldn't let my hair go gray."

"My mom said novels waste everyone's time."

I said little but wanted to divide L from her mom as you would warring dogs. I wanted to leap between them and scream Stop driving one another mad. I thought the difference between L's mom and mine was that L's mom was crazy and mine was not. I thought mine was impossible and sad but not sick while L's was clearly deranged. What monster would say You're a failure to not merely her own child but to a brilliant one who bruised easily? My mother never would. My mother frightened me but, once I grew up, never put me down. Had turning twelve in an internment camp shattered Miss Yoshiko Kato beyond repair?

L walked with clenched teeth, gauzy skirts whipping around her feet, hair flying wild, hands clutching at her coat. She hoarded coats because she was always cold after growing up in paradise. In their faux fur and quilted cotton and steel-studded leatherette, L grimaced as she strode. Then one day through a dating website she met Max, a blue-eyed banker who flew planes. He told her he would never leave his wife. Every Thursday, as he and L tried new positions on his lunch hour, he said he would never leave his wife.

L told me, This is bliss.

I wanted to tear Max from L just as I yearned to tear her from her mother. I wanted to save L.

I said, He will never leave his wife.

She said, Without him I have nothing.

I said, You're with someone else's man.

She said, And I don't care.

She told her father about Max. This was a topic on which they could bond. He gave her tips on how to satisfy a married man, such as: Ask him what he wants and Sometimes, serve scones.

L and I celebrated our birthdays together, orchestrating shopping trips and dim-sum dates. The last few years, these tapered off a bit because I could not reconcile her thing with Max and she was usually broke. I could have done more. I could also have done less.

The last birthday she lived to see was mine. Her email that day said: Don't think of me as someone with no money. Think of me as someone with a heart who wants to celebrate. In a room strung with pink balloons, she gave me Jiffy muffins and a lava lamp.

She started stalking Max. She stood outside his office all day, wearing skintight sequinned tops.

He told her he would never leave his wife.

She called me one fall morning in 2007. I was sitting in this very chair, absently skimming that day's news online as she spoke about therapeutic mud baths, the Virgin of Guadalupe and a cat named Robocop she might adopt. She did not tell me her actual plan. They say it was deliberate because along with the prescription pills and liquor she also took Dramamine, to keep it down.

Her father brought her body home. No services were held.

On her birthday this year, as every year since then, I Googled her. What do I hope to find? That she's out there somewhere amassing a digital footprint? She had none while still alive, except as code names (FuzzyBunny, SoyToy) on dating sites before meeting Max. Her name appeared frequently online then as now because it is also the name of an ethnic studies professor at a major university. It is never our L who pickets country clubs or displays Asian fetish-porn in classrooms but this other, pockmarked L.