Walter Mosley - The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey

Hilly held Ptolemy’s elbow as they went up the wooden stairs that had worn down into grooves from the heavy foot traffic over the years. As they approached the screen door, Ptolemy could see that there was a party going on. Dozens of people were crowded into the living room, talking and smoking, drinking and posing in their nice clothes.

Hilly reached for the screen door but it flew inward before he touched it.

“Pitypapa!” a woman yelled. “Pitypapa, I ain’t seen you in six and a half years.”

Big, copper-brown, and buxom Hilda “Niecie” Brown folded the frail old man in a powerful yet cushioned embrace. For a brief span that extended into itself Ptolemy was lifted out of his pained elderly confusion. He floated off into the sensation of a woman holding him and humming with satisfaction.

She kissed his forehead and then his lips. When she let him go he held on to her arm.

“Oh, ain’t that sweet?” Niecie said. “You miss me, Pitypapa?”

Ptolemy looked up at her face. Her skin was smooth and tight from fat. Her mouth was smiling, showing two golden teeth, but in spite of the brave front Niecie’s eyes were so sad that he felt her agony. He raised his hands through the pain of his shoulders and placed them on the sides of Niecie’s arms.

“Niecie,” he said. “Niecie.”

“Come on in, Pitypapa. Come on in and sit with me.”

The crowded room smelled of food, cigarettes, and booze. Four children were playing on a green couch but Niecie shooed them away.

“Sit with me, Papa,” she said. “Tell me how you been doin’.”

Ptolemy sat looking around the room, remembering the house. He had come here for Niecie’s wedding and later, when her mother, June, had died. June was his oldest sister’s child, he remembered. She died of pneumonia, the doctor said, but anyone could have told you that she really died because she went wild with drink and dance after Charles had died.

“You remember my house?” Niecie asked.

“I only remembah it bein’ old,” he said. “I was already old when you got married. There ain’t nuthin’ here young or childish.”

Even Niecie’s smile was sad now.

A short girl came up to stand next to Niecie. She was dark-skinned; not as dark as Ptolemy but almost.

“You remember Robyn?” Niecie asked. “But maybe not. Maybe she came here to live wit’ me since the last time I seen you. Her mother died an’ me an’ Hilly took her in.”

Robyn was no more than eighteen and she was beautiful to Ptolemy. Her almond-shaped eyes looked right into his, not making him feel old or like he wasn’t there. And there was something else about her: she didn’t remind him of anyone he had ever met before. Usually, almost always, people looked to him like someone he’d already met along the way. That was why he found it so hard to remember who someone was. Faces usually made him want to remember something that was lost. He felt sometimes that he had met everyone, tasted every food, seen every sky there was to be seen.

“I seen it all,” old Coydog used to say, “but that don’t mean I seen everything.”

Ptolemy understood now because Robyn was someone, something, new to him.

“Hi,” she said with perfect lips that smiled briefly, showing off her strong white teeth.

“You grinnin’, Pitypapa,” Niecie said. “All the men here be grinnin’ after Robyn.”

“I have never seen anything like you, girl,” Ptolemy said.

Robyn put out a hand and he took it, staring at her.

He was suddenly aware that somewhere a woman was crying. The faraway, muted sobs were pitiful. For some reason this made Ptolemy remember.

“Where’s Reggie?” he asked Robyn.

With her eyes she indicated someplace behind Ptolemy. He tried to turn his head but his old joints wouldn’t cooperate.

“Why don’t you go with him, Robyn?” Niecie said.

Ptolemy was still holding her hand. She pulled gently and he got up with a minimum of pain in his knees. Robyn was just about his height. He grabbed on to her elbow and she guided him through the mob of guests in the living room. They went into a narrow hallway that made the house seem larger because it was so long.

They passed a room from which came the sad sobbing. He removed his grip from Robyn’s arm. Gently she took the hand in hers.

“Why she’s cryin’?” Ptolemy asked.

“She been like that for hours,” the girl answered.

They came to a brown door that was closed. Robyn opened the door and stood aside for Ptolemy to pass through.

It was a very small chamber, only big enough for the single bed and an open coffin. The pine box fit Reggie’s hefty proportions perfectly. The tall young brown man’s waxy hands were crossed over his chest. His face was calm but the smile that the mortician had placed there was not any expression that Reggie had in life.

Ptolemy turned to Robyn with his mouth open—screaming silently. He forgot how to breathe or even how to stand. Falling forward into the child’s arms, the old man cried, “No.”

“Didn’t Hilly tell you?” Robyn asked.

Ptolemy heard the question but didn’t remember. Maybe the boy had said something. Maybe he wasn’t listening when he did. Maybe if he had listened Reggie wouldn’t be dead.

Ptolemy pushed against Robyn’s shoulders and turned to see the boy. Big oily tears came down his face. He leaned over the low-standing coffin, putting his hands against Reggie’s chest, tears falling upon his own knuckles and Reggie’s. The young man’s chest felt like the hard mattress that Coydog slept on in his room at the back of Jack’s Barber Shop, where he lived after they kicked him out of his apartment for not paying the rent.

Reggie had a long face with a small scar at the corner of his mouth. His eyes were closed. His black suit was new.

“I don’t know why I gotta buy him a new suit t’get buried in,” Ptolemy’s father, Titus Grey, complained when his wife, Aurelia, had demanded they get good clothes to bury Titus’s father in. “He never even came by once when I was growin’ up. Not so much as one hello to his son and now you want me to spend a month’s wages on a new suit he only gonna wear once.”

“It’s not for him,” Aurelia had said. “Look here.”

She touched Titus with one hand and with the other she gestured at Li’l Pea. Ptolemy thought that he was maybe five at that time.

“You see your son?” Aurelia asked.

Titus looked but did not speak.

“When you pass, how do you want him to remember you?” she asked her husband. “He watch you day and night. He practice talkin’ like you an’ walkin’ like you. So what you gonna show him to do when he have to lay you an’ me to rest?”

That night he was lying in his bed with his eyes open, thinking about his grandfather lying on the undertaker’s table. From the darkness came candlelight and the heavy steps of his father. The huge sharecropper sat on the boy’s cot and placed his hand upon Ptolemy’s chest.

“I love you, boy,” he’d said.

There was a whole conversation after that but Ptolemy couldn’t remember it. There was something about his grandfather’s death, about men who love their sons . . .

Ptolemy didn’t remember sitting down on the bed across from Reggie’s coffin, but there he was. Robyn was seated next to him, holding his hands. Maybe he had told her the story of his grandfather’s death or maybe he was just thinking about it. They had been talking; he was pretty sure about that.

He noticed that the yellow wallpaper had slanted red lines that were going opposite ways, almost meeting each other to form unconnected capital T’s. Seeing this, recognizing the pattern, made him smile.

“When did your father die?” Robyn asked.