“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.
“A long time ago,” he said. “I seen a lotta people die. Dead in bed, and lynched, but the worst of all is when some stranger come to the do’ an’ tell ya that your father is dead an’ ain’t nevah comin’ home again.”
“You have big hands, Mr. Grey,” Robyn said. She was squeezing the tight muscle between the forefinger and thumb of his left hand. “Strong.”
The pressure hurt and felt good at the same time.
“He stoled my money,” he said.
“Who did?”
“I had three checks at the place but he only give me the money for one. I give ten dollars to this woman had a green ring and then thirty-two dollars and thirty-seven cent fo’ my groceries. But now all I got in my envelope is a hunnert an’ sixty-sumpin’ dollars and a few pennies. That adds up to two eleven, but I had three checks for that much. I know ’cause I save ’em up so Reggie only have to go to the bank with me once ev’ry three weeks. We put one check in a account for my bills to be paid and we spend one on groceries.”
“Reggie stoled your money?” Robyn asked.
“Yeah . . . I mean no. Reggie wouldn’t steal. It’s that big boy, that, that, that ...”
“Hilly?”
“There, you got it.”
So much talking and thinking exhausted Ptolemy. Then remembering that Reggie was dead and that they’d never go to the bank again made him sad.
Robyn squeezed his hand and tilted her head to the side so that he’d have to notice her.
“Don’t you worry, Mr. Grey,” she said. “It’s all gonna be all right.”
“How?”
“Reggie gonna go to heaven an’ Hilly gonna go to hell.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes I am,” Robyn said, her young features set with grim certainty.
Such serious intentions on a child’s face made Ptolemy smile. His smile infected her and soon they were giggling together, holding hands, sitting next to Reggie’s corpse.
After a while the girl stood up, pulling Ptolemy to his feet. Together they left the dead man and went back down the long hall. When they approached the room where the woman cried, Ptolemy asked, “Is that the girlfriend?”
“They been married for three years.”
“His wife?” Ptolemy remembered that Reggie was gone for four days once because of his wedding. Then he’d gotten a job at a supermarket and would bring him strawberry jam and old-fashioned crunchy peanut butter almost every week.
Robyn nodded. “And their children. She sat down in Niecie’s room on the way back from seein’ Reggie an’ now she cain’t stop cryin’.”
Ptolemy pushed the door open and walked in.
The room was filled with yellow light. The walls and the floor were dark, dark blue. A high-yellow woman was slumped across the blue sheets of the bed, crying, crying. Lying next to her head was a toddler girl in fetal position and sucking her thumb. Next to the girl sat a five-year-old boy who was turning the pages of a book. Both children were much darker than their mother.
The boy looked up when Ptolemy and then Robyn came in.
“You readin’ that book, boy?” Ptolemy asked slowly as if each word was a heavy weight on his tongue.
The boy nodded.
“What’s it say?”
The child shrugged and looked back at the book.
“His name is Arthur,” Robyn whispered.
The boy looked up and said, “It got pictures of people with no skin an’ pictures of hands and feet and other parts.”
“Aunt Niecie was goin’ to nurse school for a while,” Robyn said. “It’s prob’ly one’a her schoolbooks.”
Arthur nodded solemnly and scratched his nose.
“Nina,” Robyn said then. “Nina, this here is Mr. Grey, the one that Reggie helped out.”
The woman raised her head from folded arms. Ptolemy could see that she was young, in her early twenties, no
