Triple Threat

Game

One Year Ago

The worst fear is the fear that follows you into your own home.

Fear you lock in with you when you latch the door at night.

Fear that cozies up to you twenty-four hours a day, relentless and arrogant, like cancer.

The diminutive woman, eighty-three years old, white hair tied back in a jaunty ponytail, sat at the window of her Upper East Side townhouse, looking out over the trim street, which was placid as always. But she herself was not. She was agitated and took no pleasure in the view she’d enjoyed for thirty years. The woman had fallen asleep last night thinking about the She-Beast and the He-Beast and she’d awakened thinking about them. She’d thought about them all morning and she thought about them still.

She sipped her tea and took some small pleasure in the sliver of autumn sunlight resting on her hands and arms. The flicker of gingko leaves outside, silver green, silver green. Was that all she had left? Minuscule comforts like this? And not very comforting at that.

Fear…

Sarah Lieberman hadn’t quite figured out their game. But one thing was clear: Taking over her life was the goal—like a flag to be captured.

Three months ago Sarah had met the Westerfields at a fundraiser held at the Ninety-second Street Y. It was for a Jewish youth organization, though neither the name nor appearance of the two suggested that was their religious or ethnic background. Still, they had seemed right at home and referred to many of the board members of the youth group as if they’d been friends for years. They’d spent a solid hour talking to Sarah alone, seemingly fascinated with her life in the “Big Apple” (John’s phrase) and explaining how they’d come here from Kansas City to “consummate” (Miriam’s) several business ventures John had set up. “Real estate. That’s my game. Ask me again and I’ll tell you the same.”

They’d had dinner at Marcel’s the next night, on Madison, with John dominating the five-foot-tall woman physically and Miriam doing the same conversationally, flanking Sarah in a booth in the back. She’d wanted her favorite table, which had room for three (yet was usually occupied by one) at the window. But the Westerfields had insisted and, why not? They’d made clear this was their treat.

The two were charming, informed in a Midwest, CNN kind of way, and enthusiastically curious about life in the city—and about her life in particular. Their eyes widened when they learned that Sarah had an apartment on the ground floor of the townhouse she owned on Seventy-fifth Street. Miriam asked if it was available. They’d been looking for a place to stay. The Mandarin Oriental was, Miriam offered, too expensive.

The garden apartment was on the market but was priced high—to keep out the riff-raff, she’d said, laughing. But she’d drop it to fair market value for the Westerfields.

Deal.

Still, Sarah had learned about the world from her husband, a businessman who had successfully gone up against Leona Helmsley at one point. There were formalities to be adhered to and the real estate management company did their due diligence. They reported the references in the Midwest attested to the Westerfields’ finances and prior history.

There was, of course, that one bit of concern: It seemed a bit odd that a fifty-something-year-old mother and a son in his late twenties would be taking an apartment together, when neither one seemed disabled. But life circumstances are fluid. Sarah could imagine situations in which she might find herself living with a family member not a husband. Maybe Miriam’s husband had just died and this was temporary—until the emotional turbulence settled.

And Sarah certainly didn’t know what to make of the fact that while the garden apartment featured three bedrooms, when she and Carmel had brought tea down as the two tenants moved in, only one bedroom seemed to be put to that purpose. The other two were used for storage.

Odd indeed.

But Sarah thought the best of people, always had. The two had been nice to her and, most important, treated her like an adult. It was astonishing to Sarah how many people thought that once you reached seventy or eighty you were really an infant.

That you couldn’t order for yourself.

That you didn’t know who Lady Gaga was.

“Oh, my,” she’d nearly said to one patronizing waitress. “I’ve forgotten how this knife works. Could you cut up my food for me?”

For the first weeks the Westerfields seemed the model tenants. Respectful of landlady and premises, polite and quiet. That was important to Sarah, who’d always been a light sleeper. She didn’t see much of them.

Not at first.

But soon their paths began to cross with more and more frequency. Sarah would return from a shopping trip with Carmel or from a board meeting or luncheon at one of the nonprofits she was involved with and there would be Miriam and John on the front steps or, if the day was cool or wet, in the tiny lobby, sitting on the couch beside the mailboxes.

They brightened when they saw her and insisted she sit with them. They pelted her with stories and observations and jokes. And they could be counted on to ask questions relentlessly: What charities was she involved in, any family members still alive, close friends? New to the area, they asked her to recommend banks, lawyers, accountants, investment advisors, hinting at large reserves of cash they had to put to work soon.

A one-trick puppy, John pronounced solemnly: “Real estate is the way to go.”

It’s also a good way to get your balls handed to you, son, unless you’re very, very sharp. Sarah had not always been a demure, retiring widow.

She began to wonder if a Nigerian scam was looming, but they never pitched to her. Maybe they were what they seemed: oddballs from the Midwest, of some means, hoping for financial success here and an entree into a New York society that had never really been available to people like them—and that people like them wouldn’t enjoy even if they were admitted.

Ultimately, Sarah decided, it was their style that turned her off. The charm of the first month faded.

Miriam, also a short woman though inches taller than Sarah, wore loud, glittery clothes that clashed with her dark-complexioned, leathery skin. If she didn’t focus, she tended to speak over and around the conversation, ricocheting against topics that had little to do with what you believed you were speaking about. She wouldn’t look you in the eye and she hovered close. Saying, “No, thanks,” to her was apparently synonymous with, “You betcha.”

“This big old town, Sarah,” Miriam would say, shaking her head gravely. “Don’t… you get tuckered out, ‘causa it?”

And the hesitation in that sentence hinted that the woman was really going to say “Don’t it tucker you out?”

John often wore a shabby sardonic grin, as if he’d caught somebody trying to cheat him. He was fleshy big, but strong, too. You could imagine his grainy picture in a newspaper above a story in which the word “snapped” appeared in a quote from a local sheriff.

If he wasn’t grumbling or snide, he’d be snorting as he told jokes, which were never very funny and usually bordered on being off-color.

But avoiding them was gasoline on a flame. When they sensed she was avoiding them they redoubled their efforts to graze their way into her life, coming to her front door at any hour, offering presents and advice… and always the questions about her. John would show up to take care of small handyman tasks around Sarah’s apartment. Carmel’s husband, Daniel, was the building’s part-time maintenance man, but John had befriended him and took over on some projects to give Daniel a few hours off here and there.

Sarah believed the Westerfields actually waited, hiding behind their own door, listening for the sound of footsteps padding down the stairs—and ninety-four-pound Sarah Lieberman was a very quiet padder. Still, when she reached the ground-floor lobby, the Westerfields would spring out, tall son and short mother, joining her as if this were a rendezvous planned for weeks.