Walter Mosley - The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey

Chin smiled. She was pretty, though somewhat severe looking. She looked at least twenty years younger than Moishe, but they were almost the same age.

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.