Some of it is age, her son said to me. Everyone knows old people can be paranoid. But she’s not crazy to think she’s being preyed on. Her phone rings all day long, he said (meaning her landline, she’s never had a cell phone), and it’s just one scammer after the next. Everyone gets these kinds of calls, but after you hit a certain age it’s like you become this gigantic target. She gets confused by their fast talk and she gets scared, especially when they address her by name. How do they know her name? How did they get her number? Of course she understands what these people are up to and that she has to be on her guard. But she lives in fear that, one way or another, one of these crooks will get around her. Lately she’s been obsessed with a story she heard on the news, about a woman who was so ashamed that she’d let some caller rip off her savings that she killed herself. It seems this poor lady was afraid that when her family found out what a stupid thing she’d done they’d declare her incompetent and take away her freedom.

Now that’s my mother’s biggest fear, the man said. All I have to do is say the words assisted living and she threatens to disown me. And really, for her age, she’s doing pretty well on her own.

This conversation—our first—took place a couple of years ago, on a bench in the building courtyard. It’s something I never do, sit in the courtyard, but I’d accidentally let something burn in the oven and was waiting for my apartment to air out. He was visiting his mother and had stepped out for a smoke. It was a warm dry summer day, there was deep shade from the courtyard trees, the rose trellis was in bloom, and the air was as sweet as city air can get. I hadn’t been near a person smoking in a long time, and rather than being unpleasant the smell filled me with nostalgia. Cars packed with teens, college all-nighters, drugs, rock, cocktails, sex. I wouldn’t have minded if he’d blown the smoke right in my face rather than deliberately over his shoulder.