His mother’s day was a barrage of interruptions, he said. Congratulations, she just won a sweepstakes. She recently stayed at a certain hotel (as a matter of fact, she has stayed in a hotel exactly once in her life, on her honeymoon, more than six decades ago) and is now eligible to receive a reward. The thank-you gift from an anonymous friend is waiting for her. The special life-saving device she ordered is ready to be shipped. She is eligible for a free trip, a new credit card, a preapproved loan, a personalized wellness package, a free home security system. To protect her bank account, she must verify her personal information. A grandchild needs money to get out of jail; another grandchild has been kidnapped and is being held for ransom.

What about the Do Not Call Registry, I asked, and the man shrugged. He’d registered his mother’s number but the volume of calls stayed about the same. When I asked why his mother didn’t use caller ID, he smiled. She has caller ID, he said. But it’s like she can’t resist. The phone rings, Mom’s got to answer. She wants to know who it is! Also, it’s not rational, but she’s damned if she’s going to let bad people force her to hide from her own phone. And when it’s not a robocall but an actual person, though I’ve warned her never to talk to them, she sometimes does. She starts interrogating them. How do they know her name? How did they get her number? Or she’ll play along for a bit, you know, playing the sweet gaga old lady. Then they ask for her social security number and she says, Sure, honey, got a pen? It’s one two three, four five, six seven eight nine. When someone told her they had one of her grandkids, she said, That’s okay, I got more, and I never liked that one anyway.

Hearing this, it crossed my mind that the woman, all alone all day in her apartment, might actually enjoy these phone calls, that they might be as much a meager kind of entertainment as a nuisance to her. I was reminded of another neighbor I once had, another elderly widow living alone, who used to knock on my door regularly to complain about the noise—baffling me, because I hadn’t been making any noise—until I realized that it was something else. A terrible thing was happening to her. Attention must be paid.