Walter Mosley - The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey

Nina brought both hands to her mouth.

Ptolemy put the coin back in his pocket.

“But before I hand them ovah I got to know how my boy died.”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I, I don’t know who shot him.”

“What about Alfred?”

“No.”

“Did you tell him that Reggie was takin’ you and the kids away?”

Nina tried to speak but could not.

Sirens blared and suddenly four police cars raced past Niecie’s house and on down the street.

“He couldn’t, Mr. Grey. My Al couldn’t do nuthin’ like that.”

“What was he in prison for?”

“No.”

“Was he wit’ you when Reggie was killed?”

“I’m a good woman, Mr. Grey . . . a mother.”

“Was Alfred wichyou when they opened fire on Reggie on the front steps of his friend’s house?”

“My baby couldn’t do nuthin’ like that,” Nina said, her eyes begging him.

“How long aftah you told Alfred was Reggie killed?”

“A, a, a day and a, a, a day and a half.”

“An’ you didn’t think nuthin’ about that?”

Nina’s hands were back at her mouth again. She shook her head and tears squeezed out from her eyes.

This is the mother of Reggie’s children , Ptolemy thought, the mother of my blood.

“I’m a good woman, Mr. Grey.”

“But did you tell Alfred that you was goin’ away with Reggie?”

She nodded almost imperceptibly.

“Did he say he wanted you to stay?”

She nodded.

“An’ what else did he say?”

“That I was his woman. That I belonged wit’ him.”

Ptolemy thought about his great-great-grandniece and -nephew again, this woman’s children.

“Why you wanna run around wit’ him, treatin’ Reggie like that?”

Nina looked away.

“Did you know?” he asked.

“No,” she said to the splintery wooden deck.

Ptolemy looked out across the street and saw Hernandez gazing back at him. His heart thudded against his rib cage like the kicks of an angry mule against a barn door. His mind felt as if it might explode. He took out one of the Devil’s pills and swallowed it without water.

He felt the life-preserving, life-taking medicine work its way down his dry gullet. It was a painful journey. Ptolemy thanked Satan for the ache.

“Did you suspect?” he asked.

“Why you wanna bother me ’bout all this?” Nina cried. “Why you doin’ this to me?”

Hilly came out on the porch to see what was wrong.

“Go away, Hilliard,” Ptolemy said. “This ain’t none’a your nevermind.”

The boy snorted and went back in the house.

When Hilly was gone, Ptolemy said, “Reggie took care’a me an’ you did him dirt. I got to ask. I got to find out who killed him.”

Nina stopped crying. Ptolemy thought she finally understood that Reggie’s death didn’t give her a right to blubber and moan.

“I asked him,” she said.

“Who?”

“Al.”

“An’ what he say?”

“He slapped me. He knocked me down. He told me that he wouldn’t nevah have Reggie’s kids in his home.”

“An’ that’s the man you run to when Reggie wanna be wit’ you an’ have his family wit’ you?”

“Al was my first man evah, Mr. Grey. I was wit’ him when I was just thirteen an’ thought I was grown. I just don’t know how to say no to a man like that. I loved Reggie,” she said. “I loved him, but I just couldn’t help myself.”

The pill began to work. The fire in Ptolemy’s mind extinguished, leaving the cold he’d felt in Coydog’s treasure cave. The old man shivered and closed his eyes.

“You murdered my boy,” he said.

Nina shook her head, but it was a weak denial. It was more like she was saying, I didn’t mean to. I couldn’t help my feelings.

“So I will make sure that Robyn makes sure that you get enough to live on, to take care’a them babies.”

“But Al won’t take ’em,” she cried.

“I ain’t talkin’ to Al.”

That girl you was with sure was pretty, Mr. Grey,” Hernandez was saying on the drive back to Ptolemy’s home.

They were sitting side by side in the front seat. Ptolemy wore the bright-red seat belt across his chest. He felt that the wide band made him seem small, like a child.

“She told me that her boyfriend mighta murdered my great-grandnephew.”

“Oh.”

“What’s all them tattoos on your arms, Hernandez?”

“Just memories.”

“Back when you was young and wild?”

“Just back when,” the driver said. “Things change, but they don’t get better.”

They drove for a while. When Hernandez came to a stop at a big intersection he said, “She could be lying to you, Mr. Grey.”

“Yeah.”

“You know some crazy kids who lived a few blocks away from my house said that my cousin Hector had got their little sister drunk and pulled a train on her with his boys.”

Ptolemy didn’t know what a train was exactly, but he could guess.

“They come and killed Hector and his main man, Pepe,” Hernandez continued. “I know that Hector didn’t do it ’cause I was wit’ those crazy kids’ sister by myself. And we were gettin’ high, but there wasn’t nobody else there.”

“Yeah,” Ptolemy said again.

The light changed and Hernandez drove on.

“Aren’t you gonna ask me what I did, Mr. Grey?” the driver asked ten blocks further on.

“Why would I?” he replied. “Either you killed them or her or you didn’t do nuthin’. Any way you go, you left with a dead brother and a lie.”

They didn’t talk again until Ptolemy climbed out of the limo in front of his house. He offered Hernandez five dollars as a tip but the Mexican waved it away.

“You all right, Mr. Grey. Watch out, now.”

He came home to an empty apartment. Everything was clean because Robyn cleaned every day. She swept and mopped and dusted and washed. She even ironed Ptolemy’s clothes and hers.

When Robyn did come home he told her that they would have to go see Moishe Abromovitz again.

“All the way down there, Uncle? Why?”

“’Cause I made a mistake an’ told Niecie that you was gonna take care’a my money. You know the minute I drop dead she gonna get some kinda lawyer and try to take that money from you.”

“Niecie wouldn’t do that.”

“Baby, I know that’s what you think. You think Niecie love you and care about you. But all that’s just in yo’ head.” As Ptolemy spoke he realized that Coy had been coming to life in his mind for the past weeks; that his murdered mentor was coming back to see him through this delicate negotiation at the end of his life. “Niecie love you as long as you sleep on the couch and do the things she don’t wanna do. She love you when the old men come around to look at you and you get behind her skirts. But when she find out how much money you gonna get, she won’t love you no more. She won’t ever again. She gonna say you stoled her rightful inheritance.”

“You wrong, Uncle,” Robyn said, “Aunt Niecie wouldn’t evah hate me like that.”

Ptolemy reached across the small kitchen table to take Robyn’s strong hands in his big one.

“I know how you feel and I respect you,” he said. “But do you believe in me?”

“Yes.”

“An’ do you respect me?”

“Yes.”

“So go wit’ me to see Moishe so that I can make sure that your money is yours. And if Niecie come aftah you aftah I’m gone, then I want you to light me a candle on this here table for seven days. Will you do all that for me, baby?”

“I won’t have to light no candle, because Aunt Niecie ain’t nevah gonna think I’d steal from her.”

I have three red apples, two oranges, and a sausage I bought from the market,” Nora Chin said.

They were sitting across from each other at a large conference table of the Terrence P. Laughton Mental Services Center of Santa Monica. Moishe Abromovitz, the old man in the middle-aged man’s body, and Robyn sat at the far end of the table. There was a large tape recorder sitting between Ptolemy and the psychiatrist. The spool of recording tape rolled steady and slow.

A big black fly buzzed past Nora Chin’s face, but she didn’t move or flinch.

“Today’s Robyn’s birthday, Dr. Chin,” Ptolemy said. “She’s eighteen today.”

“How many apples do I have, Mr. Grey?” she responded.

“Two,” he said. “Two apples, three oranges, and a sausage. You know pork sausage an’ applesauce would make my whole day back when I was a boy.”

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.”