The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey

The apartment becomes livable. While cleaning, Robyn comes across the card from the social worker, Antoine Church. She encourages Ptolemy to see him and find out if the doctor he mentioned could help restore Ptolemy’s memory. Church puts them in touch with a doctor named Ruben, but he won’t be able to see them for three weeks.

While they wait to meet with Ruben, Ptolemy realizes that cleaning his apartment has helped clarify his thinking: “As the days had gone by, Ptolemy had gotten more and more bossy. He’d tell Robyn how to cook his eggs and where he wanted his books, even what clothes he’d like her to wear” (108).. He asks if Robyn would like to stay with him permanently. Robyn admits that she’s still sleeping on a couch at Niecie’s, and she would love to have a bed of her own. When Ptolemy offers to buy her one, she thinks he’s joking until he shows her a suitcase containing ninety-four thousand dollars. This is all the social security money he’s saved over the years. Ptolemy offers to share it with Robyn and buy her anything she wants. She is overwhelmed and runs away.

Returning shortly afterward, Robyn confesses that nobody has ever been kind or generous to her. She doesn’t want the money, but she does want to live with Ptolemy. Robyn suggests that they open a savings account for him at the bank and deposit the cash there, where nobody can steal it. After opening the account, Ptolemy and Robyn leave the bank and run into an older woman named Shirley Wring. A few weeks earlier, he had lent Shirley ten dollars to pay her electric bill. In exchange, she offered him an emerald ring as collateral, but he refused to accept it. Shirley explains the situation to the suspicious Robyn and offers to buy them lunch to express her gratitude.

In the weeks that follow, Shirley frequently visits Ptolemy’s apartment. She patiently listens to his stories even when they don’t make sense. Ptolemy finds himself settling into a comforting new routine: “The days passed in a new kind of harmony for the old man. The TV stayed off unless Robyn wanted to watch her shows at night. Ptolemy refused to have her leave it on for him or turn to his news station” (121). When Robyn’s daybed is delivered, she is overjoyed.

The weeks before Ptolemy’s appointment with the doctor pass quickly. He and Robyn meet Dr. Bryant Ruben, who examines Ptolemy and considers him to be a good candidate for an experimental drug to improve memory. The downside is that Ptolemy might not live to see 100. The doctor wants Ptolemy’s remains after his death to dissect the body and learn more about the drug’s action. Ptolemy believes that he is dealing with the devil. Ruben offers to pay Ptolemy $2,500, but Ptolemy refuses to take the money. He superstitiously believes that as long as he doesn’t take payment from the devil, his soul will be safe. Ptolemy tells Ruben that he only needs a few months of clear thinking to get his affairs in order, to find something that Coydog left him years earlier, and to try to help Reggie’s two little children. Despite Robyn’s objections, Ptolemy signs the paperwork authorizing treatment with the drug.

At the beginning of the following week, a nurse arrives at the apartment to inject Ptolemy with the treatment for five days. He suffers side effects that grow increasingly worse each day. By the final day, he is delirious and remembers an encounter with Coydog from his childhood in Mississippi. Coydog has stolen five thousand gold coins from a wealthy white man who brags that his family purchased them before the Civil War. The coins are hidden behind a waterfall in the woods. He drags Ptolemy out of bed in the middle of the night to show him the hiding place. This is Coydog’s treasure. He himself intends to run away to New York with some of the coins, but he instructs Ptolemy to come back for the rest when he is big and strong enough to lift the rock concealing their hiding place: “Later on, when you get to be a young man, I want you to move that stone or break it and take that treasure and make a difference for poor black folks treated like they do us” (140).