The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey (30 page)

Chin held up an eight-by-ten photograph of a highway scene. There were only four cars evident: three were coming toward the viewer; of these, two were white and one yellow. A blue station wagon, its red brake lights ablaze, was on the other side of the road. After a few seconds Nora Chin put the photograph face down on the table.

“What was the color of the car driving away from you, Mr. Grey?”

“Which way is Toledo from here?” he asked.

“What?” The stern-faced and lovely doctor of the mind was thrown off.

“The road sign said Toledo. I figure you must be askin’ me where am I between that blue car an’ Toledo.”

“I think we’ve done enough testing,” Chin said, her surprise turning into a friendly smile. “Do you know why you’re here today, sir?”

In an instant a dozen thoughts flitted through Ptolemy’s mind: his friends Maude and Coy on fire in the Deep South; Melinda Hogarth, Reggie, the lady newscaster; Sensia, who taught him about love past the age of forty; Robyn, who was sitting there, frowning because the presence of a Chinese woman and a Jewish man made her nervous.

“Because I’m old and for a long time I was confused in my mind,” he said.

“You know that there’s a video camera in the wall behind me, recording our conversation?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And that there’s also a tape recorder running.” She tapped the big box with a slender finger.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And is that all right with you?”

“I want to make it clear that I’m of sound mind so that nobody can argue about my last will and testament.”

Suddenly Nora Chin’s face drew in on itself. It was as if she had heard a sound somewhere and was trying to identify it. Ptolemy decided this was how she looked when she was serious. He also thought that this was the face she put on before a kiss.

Women deadly serious when it come to kissin’,
Coy used to say.
They laugh all the way there, but when it come down to kissin’ they like a cat when she see sumpin’ shakin’ in the tall grass.

The black fly landed on the big knuckle of Ptolemy’s left hand. He couldn’t help but think that this was Coy coming to visit.

“Why would anyone question your will, Mr. Grey?”

“Because I’ma leave everything to Robyn Small.”

“And why would anyone contest that decision?”

“Because she’s young and not my blood. Because my real family think they deserve my savin’s and property.”

“And you feel that they don’t deserve it?”

“Not exactly that. It’s just that I don’t have no trust in ’em,” Ptolemy said. “Not even a little bit. They good people and I done asted Robyn to take care of ’em. I set up with Mr. Abromovitz to give ’em a little money every month. But Robyn need to be the one in charge.”

“And why is that, Mr. Grey?”

“Because when she had the chance to take my money and use it for herself she didn’t. Because she don’t think that my family will evah be mad with her. Because she the one took me to the doctor an’ got me the vitamins I needed to make me able to be of sound mind.”

Ptolemy gazed at his young friend at the far end of the table. She was smiling and crying.

“But most of all, it’s because when she see a mess she have to clean it up,” he said.

“I don’t understand,” Nora Chin said.

“Robyn is more worried about where she is than where she goin’ to. She want her bed made and the dishes washed. She want to know that ev’ryone’s all right before she go to sleep. She’s a child, but chirren is our future. An’ she have received charity, an’ so she unnerstand how to give it out.”

The black fly had wandered down to Ptolemy’s index fingertip by then. It buzzed its wings, sending a thrill through the old man’s hand.

Nora’s visage had softened. She seemed to have something to say but held it back.

Ptolemy wanted to go and have dinner with her and ask her all kinds of questions about how she saw the minds of white men who came to her for excuses and reasons why they didn’t do right. Did she forgive them like so many brown people had and black people had? Or did she sneak in like Coy would have done and sabotage their wills?

“I think we have enough, Mr. Grey,” she said.

“So is the camera off now?” he asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“You like this kinda work, Miss Chin?”

“I do today,” she said slowly and deliberately.

They gazed at each other for a long moment.

“It’s all up in the head for you, isn’t it, Miss Chin,” Ptolemy said at last.

“Not always, sir. Sometimes we find a heart.”

“Yeah. That’s what Robyn know. For the rest’a my family it’s the stomach or the privates or clothes ain’t worf a dime. They don’t know the difference.”

“The difference between what?”

“Between raisin’ a child and lovin’ one.”

Nine days later, Ptolemy woke up in his bed. He felt odd, older. His first thought was of the black fly in the Chinese psychiatrist’s office. He felt the buzz against his finger and giggled.

“Uncle Grey?” Robyn said.

“Hey, baby. What day is it?”

“Thursday.”

“How long I been in this bed?”

“Do you know my name?”

“Robyn.”

The child got from the chair and sat next to him on the bed.

“You know me?”

“’Course I know you. You’re my heir.”

The beautiful child leaned over and kissed the old, old man on the lips. He closed his eyes to enjoy that unexpected blessing and then opened them again.

“What happened?” he asked.

“Aftah we got back from the head doctor you started talkin’ like you used to when I first came here . . . only you didn’t recognize nobody an’ you was kinda like outta your head. I didn’t understand most’a the things you said, and you’d be sleepin’ almost all day and all night. I turned on the radio but you said that it hurt your ears, and you would get mad at the TV.

“Aftah two days I called Dr. Ruben. He come an’ told me that you was dyin’ but he’d give you a shot anyways. He said he’d give you a shot an’ either you’d come back to the way you was, stay the way you was, or die.”

“Devil said that?”

Robyn nodded, a serious look on her face, giving her the aspect of a young child.

“How long?” Ptolemy asked.

“Nine days since we come home from Dr. Chin, and one week since the doctor give you the shot.”

“Damn. What kinda world is it we livin’ in where you got to thank the Devil for makin’ house calls?”

“He told me to call him if you passed, Uncle, but, you know, I wanna give you a proper burial.”

“When I die,” he said, “you call Moishe. He and me done made the proper plans for the funeral. He gonna give my body to Ruben, but aftah he finished with it you get it back for cemetery. And I wanna be cremated.”

“No coffin or nuthin’?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I lived a life afraid’a fire,” he said. “In the last I wanna give in to it.”

“How you feel now, Papa Grey?”

“You evah been to the circus?”

“Uh-huh. Mr. Roman used to take me when I was a li’l girl. He take me down early so we could go out back an’ see the lions in the cages and the elephants in their stalls.”

“Did you see the tightrope walker?”

“Yeah. But I’d look away sometimes ’cause I was so afraid that she would fall.”

Ptolemy nodded and smiled.

“What’s so funny?”

“It’s like you an’ me was the same,” he said, “like we was born on the same day at the start of everything. We learned to talk from the same teacher, went to the same circus. We ain’t related, but you my twin, and I’m smilin’ ’cause I know that.”

Robyn bit her lower lip and crossed her breasts with her arms.

A fly whizzed past, over her head.

“But why you asked me about the tightrope walker?”

“Because that’s how I feel right now,” Ptolemy said. “Like there’s a rope where there used to be a wide road home. It’s a thousand feet above the ground and it’s so long that you can’t see the beginnin’ or the end. I know I’ma fall off it sooner or later, but I keep on walkin’ because where you fall matters. Do you know what I mean, Robyn?”

She shook her head and took hold of his hand.

“I told you how Coy took them coins and they hung him and burned him, right?”

Robyn nodded.

“In that way he chose the time that he fell. He didn’t plan on it. He wanted to go north and start a new life. But he knew that he could fall right then and that didn’t matter because he had done his important thing in life.”

“Why didn’t he take that gold with him, Uncle?”

“Country boy don’t need no gold,” Coy and Ptolemy said as one. “Sun and soil, whiskey and women all a black farmer need. I’d give away everything I had for the sun on my face and you there next to me, girl.”

Ptolemy hoped the girl would kiss his lips again, but she didn’t. He smiled, though, as if she had.

“Can you go stay with Beckford for two days?” he asked.

“You might need me.”

“Call me every evenin’ at six. If I don’t answer, come on ovah and check on me.”

“Why?”

“’Cause I need to be alone for just two days. I need it.”

“Okay. If you say so. When should I leave?”

“In the mornin’, baby. Tonight I wanna go out with you and Shirley Wring. I want Chinese at a big red restaurant.”

 

 

 

When Ptolemy woke up in the morning, his mind was filled with the sound of dissonant flutes that played over and over at Len Wah’s Mandarin Palace. Shirley wore her emerald ring, and Robyn had on a tight black dress that was short, with spaghetti straps over her shoulders. They laughed and talked and drank cheap red wine with their meal.

For Ptolemy each story they told was a piece in a stone puzzle that made up the ground below his rope. His head was burning but he didn’t take the pill. His mind was soaring but he didn’t worry about a fall.

At their small table he felt that there was seated a multitude. Coy and Sensia flirting at the far end, Reggie and Nina arguing at each other. As he looked around he saw a hundred faces. It was like when he was in the bank with Hilly, only now he felt that he knew every name, every face . . .

Robyn was at the kitchen table, waiting for him in the morning.

“I wanted to say good-bye,” she said, apologizing.

“Me too.”

“I love you, Papa Grey.”

“If I was fifty years younger and you was twenty years older ...”

“I’d marry you and make your children and we’d move to Mississippi and grow peaches and corn.”

They kissed and embraced and kissed again . . . embraced again.

Ptolemy watched as she went down the hall toward the door. The sun was bright through the cracks, and when Robyn pushed it open her shadow threw all the way back to the old man’s toes.

“Bye,” she said.

He tried to reply, choked, and waved. He smiled but doubted that she saw it.

 

 

 

Hilly?” he said into the phone.

“Uh-huh.”

“You know Alfred’s phone number?”

“Yeah,” he said defensively.

“Call him up. Tell him that I got Reggie’s gold here at my house.”

“What gold?”

“Just tell him what I said. An’ if he don’t know what you talkin’ ’bout, tell him to ask Nina. Tell him to tell her that I said it was okay.”

 

 

 

Forty-seven minutes passed. Ptolemy sat on Robyn’s couch-bed, looking at the clock and remembering his life.

At some time it come to you that you only thinkin’ ’bout the past,
Coy had once said to him.
When you young you think about tomorrow, but when you old you turn your eyes and ears to yesterday.

Ptolemy sat at the edge of the couch, aching in his joints and remembering. His life loomed before him like ten thousand TV screens. All he had to do was look at one of them and he’d remember driving the ice truck, moving to Memphis. He saw his father in a coffin, wearing a new suit that Ptolemy bought for the burial. He saw Sensia kissing a man down the street from their apartment. It was a long soul kiss that repeated itself again and again. He hated her when she got home but he didn’t say anything because he couldn’t stand the idea of her leaving.

He took out a yellow No. 2 pencil and a single sheet of paper that was so old that it had turned brown at the edges and was somewhat brittle. On this paper he wrote a note to Robyn, telling her, as best he could, about what he was doing and why.

Ptolemy was finally done with the Devil and his alchemy. He’d lived that life and now he was through.

There was a knock at the door.

“It’s open,” the old, old man said.

Alfred pushed his way in and stormed at Ptolemy.