Walter Mosley - The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey

“How old are you, Mr. Grey?”

“Ninety-one year old. Some people don’t think I can keep count, but I’m ninety-one.”

“You don’t look that old. Your skin is so smooth and you stand up straight. It’s like you’re old but just normal old, not no ninety-one.”

She walked Ptolemy to his apartment door and watched him use the key on the topmost of four locks.

“I only lock the top one when I go out,” he told the girl. “That way I can remember the copper key. But when I go in, I lock ’em all.”

When he was just about to turn away, Robyn kissed him on the cheek and whispered something that he didn’t hear.

The TV news was on and a piano concerto was playing. He turned on a light and shuffled through the papers and boxes until he found a picture of Sensia taken before she divorced her first husband to marry Ptolemy. Her heart-shaped brown face was tilting to the side and she was smiling the smile of someone who had just made a suggestion that he would have liked.

Bombs went off across Baghdad this morning,” said a pretty woman in a blue jacket wearing red lipstick. She was a light-skinned Negro woman but looked more like a white woman trying to pass for colored to Ptolemy. “Thirty-seven people were killed and one hundred and eleven sustained serious injuries.”

A man with a deep, reassuring voice was talking on the radio about Schubert, a German musician who’d had a hard life long ago and made beautiful music, some of which no one ever heard in his lifetime.

“Three American soldiers died in the attacks. President Bush expressed his regrets but said that we were making progress in the Iraqi peace initiative.”

Ptolemy had been searching for Coydog’s treasure for days. He knew that he’d put it away somewhere amongst all the furniture and tools, newspapers and broken toasters, books, magazines, clothes, and sealed cellophane bags containing plastic cutlery wrapped in ancient paper napkins.

His deep closet was piled high with boxes of papers that went all the way back to his grandfather’s handwritten birth notice on the Leyford rice plantation in southern Louisiana. There were also his wife’s old clothes and shoes, and box after box of photographs that he’d taken, collected, and gathered from family members and the children of old friends.

“Why you keep all this old junk, Uncle?” Reggie used to ask him.

“It’s my whole family, boy,” he’d once said. “Everything about them. Without they papers they, they . . . you know what I mean.”

“No, Uncle. It’s just moldy old clothes you ain’t nevah gonna wear and papers you ain’t nevah gonna read again. I could get you a storage space and put it all in there. Then you could walk around in here.”

“What if your mama wanted to put you in a, in a . . . a sto’ place?”

“My mama’s dead, but I’m alive, Papa Grey.”

Patting the door to his deep closet Ptolemy said, “All my stuff is livin’ too.”

Someone knocked and the news announcer stopped making sense. Ptolemy turned his head toward the door and stared at it. His legs wanted to get up and go but his mind said stay down. His tongue wanted to call out, “Who is it?” But his teeth clamped shut.

Ptolemy’s dark features twisted in the attempt to remember why he wasn’t going to answer.

The knock came again. He once had a doorbell but it broke and the landlord wouldn’t fix it because he was mad that he couldn’t raise the rent and so he said that he wasn’t going to fix anything.

“I’m losing money on this place and that’s not why I own it,” he shouted at Reggie one day.

“Get the fuck outta here, man,” Reggie had said, and the white landlord, Mr. Pierpont, got the cops.

The police threatened Reggie, but then Pierpont tried to make them get rid of Ptolemy too.

“You’re trying to evict this old man?” one of the cops had asked.

“I’m losing money on this place,” Pierpont said, as if Ptolemy had stabbed him.

“If I was this young man I would have done more than threaten you,” the cop said. The police left, and potbellied Joseph Pierpont never came back, or answered any calls.

Now the doorbell no longer worked and people had to knock. And when they’d knock, Ptolemy would get up and go to the front and ask, “Who is it?”

But not this time. This time he stayed in his seat, listening to the newsman’s gibberish and music that scratched at his ears.

The knock came again and Ptolemy remembered why he stayed in his chair. That big boy Hilly had been there and knocked and said that he wanted to come in. He’d come three days in a row and each day Ptolemy told him that he didn’t need him and that he would call if he did.

“But you don’t know my numbah, Papa Grey,” Hilly said through the door. “You haven’t called up in years.”

“I know how to phone for a operator. All you have to do is dial oh. I call her if I wanna talk to you.”

“Mama told me to come help you,” Hilly, the thief, beseeched. “She be mad at me if I don’t.”

“I don’t need no help.”

“How can you go to the sto’?”

“I walk there.”

“What about the bank?”

“You stoled my money, boy. You stoled it at the bank.”

“I didn’t.”

“I don’t need yo’ kinda help,” Ptolemy said, and after three days he no longer even asked who it was. He just stared at whoever was giving the news and waited for the caller to go away and for the words to make sense again.

The first time someone knocked on the door after Reggie’s wake it wasn’t Hilly.

“Who is it?”

“Mr. Grey?” a man’s voice said.

“You Mr. Grey too?” Ptolemy asked.

“No,” the man said patiently, “you’re Mr. Grey. Open the door, please.”

Ptolemy almost obeyed; the voice was that certain.

“Who are you?”

“Antoine Church, Mr. Grey. Your nephew, Reginald, applied to the social services office for a doctor for you a while ago. Is Reginald around?”

“Reggie’s dead.”

“Oh. I’m sorry to hear that. Is someone else taking care of you?”

“I don’t need no one to take care’a me. Reggie’s dead and now there’s just me.”

The radio was playing a march and someone on the TV was laughing. Ptolemy pressed his ear against the door.

“I’ve found a doctor who wants to see you, Mr. Grey,” Antoine Church said. “He’s a memory specialist, and he has a grant, so his services are free.”

“I’m not sick. I don’t need no doctor.”

“Let me in, Mr. Grey,” the voice said. “Let me in and we can sit down and talk about it.”

“I don’t wanna talk. Go away and leave me alone.”

There came a spate of silence filled in by electronic babble.

“Mr. Grey?”

“Go on now.”

“I’m putting my card under the door. If Reginald or someone else comes by to help you—”

“Reggie’s dead. Drivebee killed him. Now, you go away.”

Again Ptolemy pressed his ear against the door. There came a soft rustling and then a sigh. After that he heard footsteps going away down the hall.

On the floor at the old man’s feet was a bright white card. Using the wall for support, he leaned down and picked it up. Putting Antoine Church’s business card in his pocket was reflex more than anything else.

Hilly kept coming by but after three days Ptolemy never opened up or even asked who it was. Sooner or later they all went away.

The knock came again.

He concentrated on the TV to keep the person on the other side of the door out of his mind.

“. . . the convicted killer was found innocent. The DNA test did not match the blood found at the crime scene,” the woman was saying.

“Mr. Grey,” a girl called.

Ptolemy leaned forward suspiciously, wondering if somehow the TV had learned how to talk to him.

“Mr. Grey, it’s me, Robyn.”

Robins. They gathered in the trees outside his parents’ house in September and October and sang a sweet song to the cool winds that eased the last heat of summer. If Ptolemy sat still enough with week-old breadcrumbs scattered on the ground, the robins and other birds would gather around him in the grass next to the cypress tree.

“That food gonna attract rats,” his father would say, but Li’l Pea didn’t believe him.

The knock came again.

“Mr. Grey, are you all right in there?”

That was the right question. Hilly had never asked how he was. Hilly was a thief and even though he had saved him from Melinda Hogarth he still stole his money and then lied about it.

Ptolemy used to give Reggie money. Reggie wanted to help him. But then Reggie got lynched.

“Mr. Grey, if you don’t talk to me I’ll have to go call the police. I’m afraid that you might be hurt in there.”

Ptolemy opened his mouth to tell the girl that he was okay but he hadn’t spoken in days and his voice was gone. He got up and coughed, took a step, coughed again.

“I’m here,” he rasped.

“What?”

“I’m here.”

“It’s me, Robyn, Mr. Grey. Can I come in?”

“Who?” he wheezed.

“Robyn. You remembah, I took you in to see Reggie’s coffin. Then we took a taxi here.”

The image of Reggie’s body came up out of the floor at Ptolemy’s feet. He gasped and sobbed, remembering the death of his beloved son or nephew or great-grandnephew, yes, great-grandnephew.

He took the chain off its hook and flipped the four locks Reggie had installed. He opened the door and Robyn stood there in a little black dress with an ivory locket hanging from her neck. Her hair was tied back and her eyes saw things that he wanted to see.

“Hi,” she said.

Ptolemy smiled because this was the girl that didn’t look like anybody else he ever knew.

“Robyn,” he said.

“Can I come in?”

He nodded, not moving.

The child swiveled her head and moved toward him; then, just as she came close, she kissed him on the cheek. He moved backward, grinning and touching the place she had kissed.

When Robyn moved around him Ptolemy turned with her, feeling as if he were dancing with Sensia at the big band shell at Pismo Beach.

“Dog!” Robyn said as she came into the congested room. “Where do you sleep, Mr. Grey?”

He pointed at the oak table against the southern wall of the room. It was piled almost to the ceiling with brown boxes.

“In them boxes?”

“No. Under.”

She stooped down, putting her hands on her bare knees and turned her head to see the thin mattress and sheer olive blanket.

“You sleep on the floor under a table?”

He nodded, suddenly shy and ashamed.

“What about rats and roaches?” she asked.

Smiling, he was reminded of red-breasted robins singing brightly, thanking him for their breadcrumbs.

“You wanna sit down, girl?”

“Where?” she asked, her left nostril rising.

“There’s chairs everywhere,” he said. “But I gotta special one for guests that I keep in the kitchen.”

He walked there feeling but not minding the pain in his knees. He’d found the aluminum garden chair set out in front of a house with six cars parked on the lawn.

“They got so many cars, they don’t have room for no outside furniture,” he said to himself as he dragged away the lightweight chair with the threaded seat of sea-green and aqua nylon ribbons.

“You use patio furniture?” Robyn asked when he returned dragging the chair behind him.

“I got them oak chairs over there,” he said, “but they too heavy now, an’ there’s all that stuff stacked on ’em. This here’s a lawn chair, but it’s comfortable, though.”

After the lovely young girl was seated, Ptolemy got his folding wood stool from under the east table. Reggie had brought it for him. It was composed of light pinewood legs held together by rainbow-colored cotton fabric. Ptolemy opened the stool and sat down in front of the black-clad black girl.

“How old are you?” he asked.

“Seventeen.”

“You should be in school, then.”

“I dropped out when I was fifteen but then I went to night school and got my GED. Now I’m gonna start goin’ to community college in the fall,” she said, adding, “An’ I’m almost eighteen, anyway.”

They were quiet for a while, looking at each other. She cast her eyes about the room while he wondered where someone like her might come from.

In the background a man was talking about Palestinians. This brought the image of Egypt into Ptolemy’s mind. Egypt—where his name came from.

“He had what they say is a Egyptian name,” Coydog had said, “but Ptolemy, Cleopatra’s father, was a Greek—mostly.”

“Is that music German?” Robyn asked.

“It’s from Europe,” he said. “Classical.”

“Oh.”

“How come you here, um, um, Robyn?”

“I came to see you.”

“Why the most beautiful girl at the whole party gonna come to a old man’s house smell like he ain’t clean it in ten, no, no, twenty-three years.”

Robyn sat forward on the lawn chair and took hold of one of Ptolemy’s big fingers. She didn’t say anything.

Ptolemy noticed that her skin was actually as dark as his but it had a younger tone. He wanted to say this but the words fishtailed away, eluding his tongue.

“Niecie wanted me to come and make sure you was okay, Papa Grey.”

He took a deep breath into his large nostrils and smiled.

“What is that smell?” Robyn asked him.

“I don’t know. There’s parts’a the house I cain’t get inta anymore. The bathroom, half the kitchen. I ain’t been deep in the bedroom since before what’s-his-name, uh, Reggie, would come.”

“You got a bedroom an’ you sleepin’ under a table?”

Ptolemy pulled his hand away from hers and tried to get up but couldn’t on the first try. Robyn grabbed the corroded metal handles of her chair and moved next to him.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Grey. I didn’t mean to embarrass you. I was just surprised, that’s all.” She took his hand again. “Niecie axed me to come here an’ be wit’ you.”

“Niecie?” Ptolemy said, remembering as if for the first time in a long time the existence of his grandniece.

“Uh-huh. Because Hilly told her that you wouldn’t let him in an’ he wanted her to come here an’ talk to you. But she’s takin’ care of Arthur an’ Letisha an’ the funeral an’ all. She aksed him why you wouldn’t let him in.” Robyn squeezed Ptolemy’s hand. “I knew why but I didn’t tell her ’bout Hilly takin’ your money ’cause Hilly live in that house too an’ he’s a thug. So I said I’d come ovah an’ see about you an’ she said okay.”

“Niecie send you?”

“Uh-huh.”

Robyn’s face was only inches from Ptolemy’s. Her eyes were asking for something, pleading with him. He didn’t understand. He didn’t know how to ask her what she wanted. But he knew that he would have done anything for that child. She was his child, his baby girl. She needed his protection.