Walter Mosley - The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey

Before Robyn came to stay with him, before Reggie came and before Sensia died, Ptolemy might have said these things. He might have talked about going to the bathroom and having sex. But now he just sat there, lost in the jumble of ideas. He knew that somebody like Church wouldn’t understand his words.

“Uncle wanna go to the kinda doctor help him remembah how to think,” Robyn said.

She was wearing her charcoal-gray dress with the high hemline and black hose under that. Sporting a hint of makeup, she carried a small red purse that was too small for her fighting knife.

“Your nephew came to see me a few months ago,” the social worker said. “He told me that you were having trouble with your memory and communication skills.”

“Reggie’s dead.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

The tone of Church’s voice jabbed at Ptolemy’s mind like the cut of a rusty chisel. It made him want to sneer and spit. He wanted to tell that man that he was an idiot, a stupid fool.

“Are you still having trouble thinking?” Church asked.

“No. I think just fine,” Ptolemy said. “It’s just that I got some trouble rememberin’ things I used to know. I mean, I know you got them gloves on ’cause you think there’s a germ in here. I know that this girl here is my granddaughter. But I don’t remembah where I put things a long time ago, an’ I cain’t, I cain’t . . . things I need to find.”

There was so much he couldn’t do. Sometimes he’d stand over the toilet for five minutes waiting to urinate. Sometimes when the phone would ring he’d go to the door and ask, “Who is it?” and when Robyn told him that it was the phone he’d get so embarrassed that he’d go into the bedroom just so he wouldn’t have to see her feeling sorry for him.

“Well,” Antoine Church said, smiling. “The reason I dropped by your house and left that card was because I found out about a man who might have just what you’re looking for.”

“What you laughin’ at, boy?” Ptolemy asked.

“I’m not laughing,” the grinning man said.

“Yes you are. Are you laughin’ at me?”

“No,” Church said, managing to approximate a sober look.

“You gonna be old too,” Ptolemy told him. “You gonna be sittin’ in this chair and a young man gonna be tellin’ you sumpin’. I got a family needs me and I cain’t walk down the street wit’out this child here to he’p me. I’m just askin’ for that, for that. That, that thing.”

Church scribbled in tiny script on a small slip of paper, which he handed to Robyn.

“Call this doctor and tell him that I referred you,” the prissy man said. “And if you have any problems you can call me. Maybe we can work together to help your uncle.”

“Thank you, Mr. Church,” Robyn said, smiling.

Mothahfuckah,” she whispered when she and Ptolemy were a few steps down the hall.

Dr. Ruben, who answered his own phone, said that he didn’t have a free appointment for three weeks.

“I’m traveling to India,” he said, “to Mumbai for a conference, but I’d be happy to see Mr. Grey when I return.”

Robyn didn’t argue with him. She made the appointment and then sat in the lawn chair that Ptolemy wouldn’t let her throw out.

“Do you want me to move back to Aunt Niecie’s house now that yo’ place is clean?” she asked her uncle .

“Do you wanna go back?”

“I wanna have a place with a bed up off’a the floor and a chest’a drawers.”

“I could buy you all that.”

“Honey, you only get two hundred and eleven dollahs a week,” she said. “That’s more than you need to live but it ain’t enough for no new bed and chest’a drawers.”

A door opened in Ptolemy’s mind and he smiled, then grinned.

“Wha?” Robyn said.

“Go in the closet an’ pull out that brown suitcase I made you leave in there.”

“That big heavy thing?”

“That’s it.”

The girl went in and dug under the mounds of picture albums and books and shoe boxes filled with letters, small tools, and what Ptolemy called “his remembrances.”

She dragged the heavy leather bag out to the center of the living room.

“Now bring me that jar with all the keys we found in it,” the old man commanded.

“Yes, Uncle.”

As the days had gone by, Ptolemy had gotten more and more bossy. He’d tell Robyn how to cook his eggs and where he wanted his books, even what clothes he’d like her to wear.

Instead of getting angry, the child almost always acquiesced to his demands. In his heart he knew that she was the one who made the important decisions, and she knew that he wanted in the worst way to be in charge.

“Here you go, Uncle,” Robyn said. She was wearing tight red jeans and a pink T-shirt. Her tennis shoes were pink too.

Ptolemy dumped the keys out on the table that once stood at the south wall, the table that he’d slept under for more than twenty years.

The small brass key was for his locker at the Y that they tore down in 1962, or maybe 1963. The big skeleton key that Robyn found under Sensia’s mattress was to the lost treasure. The three master keys on one ring were to various padlocks that he kept in the bottom drawer in the kitchen. The tin key was the one he wanted. He set it aside and placed all the rest, one by one, back in the old mustard jar.

“You could put these back,” he said, pushing the jar toward Robyn.

“Ain’t you gonna want to put that key back after you unlock the bag?” she asked.

Questions like that gave Ptolemy the most problems. When he was alone with his TV and radio, nobody asked him anything and he didn’t have to put together any responses. People talked in his head, and on the TV, but there were no questions that he had to answer.

He blinked and tried to understand all the various things she meant.

“Why don’t I just put it in my pocket and hold it for you, Uncle?”

“I can put it in my own pocket,” he said.

“Should we open it now?” she asked.

“Let’s get it up here on the table,” he said.

Together they lifted the heavy bag until they got one corner of it on the battered ash top. Then Robyn pushed until it was fully on.

Ptolemy had to study the lock. He tried different ways to put the key in. It had been a few months since he’d opened the case but finally he got it right.

“Goddamn, Uncle,” Robyn said, standing up from the aluminum and nylon chair and putting her hands to her face. “Shit!”

“You mad, baby girl?” Ptolemy said, leaning away from her, remembering the way she had looked when she beat Melinda Hogarth until blood flowed from the addict’s forehead.

Robyn was staring at the suitcase filled with ones, fives, tens, and twenties. The money was stacked in some places. In others it was piled, just thrown in, and all mixed around. Robyn dug both hands in, lifting a shovelful of cash, and coins rained down from the jumble of bills.

“Uncle,” Robyn said.

“I been savin’ that for years,” he said. “It’s almost ninety-four thousand dollars. Ninety-four thousand . . . almost.”

Robyn sat down again. Her face was indecipherable to her adopted uncle.

“Did Reggie know you had all this?” she asked.

“He knew I didn’t cash but two checks every three weeks. He’d put one in a account that paid my bills and I’d put my leftovers in the trunk. When I wanted to tell him where I put it he said that he didn’t wanna know. He said that he might start borrowin’ and not know when to quit.”

Tears were coming down Robyn’s left cheek. She had dropped the cash and now her hands were picking at each other.

“We could use this money to buy you a bed and a dresser,” Ptolemy said. “An’, an’, an’ if there’s enough, maybe a nice dress.”