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.
“What’s so funny?”
“It’s like you an’ me was the same,” he said, “like we was born on the same day at the start of everything. We learned to talk from the same teacher, went to the same circus. We ain’t related, but you my twin, and I’m smilin’ ’cause I know that.”
Robyn bit her lower lip and crossed her breasts with her arms.
A fly whizzed past, over her head.
“But why you asked me about the tightrope walker?”
“Because that’s how I feel right now,” Ptolemy said. “Like there’s a rope where there used to be a wide road home. It’s a thousand feet above the ground and it’s so long that you can’t see the beginnin’ or the end. I know I’ma fall off it sooner or later, but I keep on walkin’ because where you fall matters. Do you know what I mean, Robyn?”
She shook her head and took hold of his hand.
“I told you how Coy took them coins and they hung him and burned him, right?”
Robyn nodded.
“In that way he chose the time that he fell. He didn’t plan on it. He wanted to go north and start a new life. But he knew that he could fall right then and that didn’t matter because he had done his important thing in life.”
“Why didn’t he take that gold with him, Uncle?”
“Country boy don’t need no gold,” Coy and Ptolemy said as one. “Sun and soil, whiskey and women all a black farmer need. I’d give away everything I had for the sun on my face and you there next to me, girl.”
Ptolemy hoped the girl would kiss his lips again, but she didn’t. He smiled, though, as if she had.
“Can you go stay with Beckford for two days?” he asked.
“You might need me.”
“Call me every evenin’ at six. If I don’t answer, come on ovah and check on me.”
“Why?”
“’Cause I need to be alone for just two days. I need it.”
“Okay. If you say so. When should I leave?”
“In the mornin’, baby. Tonight I wanna go out with you and Shirley Wring. I want Chinese at a big red restaurant.”
When Ptolemy woke up in the morning, his mind was filled with the sound of dissonant flutes that played over and over at Len Wah’s Mandarin Palace. Shirley wore her emerald ring, and Robyn had on a tight black dress that was short, with spaghetti straps over her shoulders. They laughed and talked and drank cheap red wine with their meal.