wrinkled as some old people he’d known, but he could see the ninety-one years in his eyes. He could see the old confusion hovering above his crown, waiting to settle back on him like a venomless smothering snake around its prey.
“Uncle?” Robyn said.
She was standing at the door.
Ptolemy took the towel from the sink and wrapped it around his skinny waist, using his hand as the clasp. He stared at the girl but did not speak.
“You okay, Uncle?”
He nodded.
“What’s wrong?”
“I know how a man could lose his mind, but how do he find it again?” he said as she approached him.
“You’re cold.”
“I was burnin’ up there in my bed. I was thinkin’ about the river . . .”
“Where you and Coydog used to fish?”
“How much money we got in the bank now?” he asked.
“All of it. Forty-two thousand in the savings account an’ the rest in that deposit box. Come on, Uncle, you should go back to bed.”
“What’s that boy’s name? The one you seein’.”
“Beckford?”
“Yeah . . . him. You like him?”
“He all right.” Robyn looked away and Ptolemy knew for sure that she had made love to the handsome friend of Reggie.
“You said he live with three other young men?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Now that the money’s gone, you could bring him ovah if you want. You can sleep in the bedroom. I don’t care.”
“I don’t wanna talk about this, Uncle.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. I mean, it makes me feel embarrassed.”
Ptolemy hooked Robyn’s chin with the index finger of his left hand and lifted her face to regard him. She was wearing just a T-shirt, and all that covered him was that towel. Ptolemy thought about that but he wasn’t ashamed.
“I love you, Uncle Grey,” Robyn said.
“’Course you do,” he said. “I’m like family.”
“Uh-uh,” the woman inside the child said. “I got family. I know what that feels like. No, Uncle, I could sit an’ listen to you for days. Even when yo’ mind was confused an’ you was scared, I still looked up to you. And you treat me with respect an’ you still be lookin’ at my legs an’ stuff. I don’t want Beckford in this house wit’ us.”
Both Ptolemys, past and present, heard the love in her voice; neither one had the words to answer back.
Where’d you put my toolbox?” he asked Robyn the next morning as he rummaged through the living room closet.
“I put it under yo’ bed,” Robyn said. She was lying on the couch that was also a bed, watching a show about strange fish in the deep ocean.
“Could you get down there and get it for me, please?”
When she jumped up from the couch, Ptolemy said, “You could finish your show, child. I don’t need you to snap to.”
Instead of sitting back down the girl came up to him and kissed his cheek and hugged him tight. Ptolemy would always get lost in a woman’s hug. His mind still drifted under the spell a soft embrace.
“What’s that for?”
“Would you marry me if I was twenty years older and you was fifty years younger?” she asked.
“You could do bettah than somebody like me.”
“God couldn’t do bettah than you, Uncle Grey.”
It wasn’t the words so much as the hunger in the child’s tone that brought the pain into his chest. It was the same pain he felt when the giant roach flew up in his kitchen. He gripped her shoulders and she gazed at him.
“Are you,” he asked, “are you goin’ out with Beckford tonight?”
“Not if you don’t want me to.”
“No, it’s all right. I actually wanted to sit quiet and read some.”
“Are you tired’a me bein’ here, Uncle?”
“No, baby. You put a fire in my mind and love at my doorstep.” He’d heard the words somewhere before,
