The Great Gilly Hopkins

“Oh, you got time for a piece of pie, now, don’t you, Mr. Randolph? It’s cherry today.”

“Cherry. My, my.” Mr. Randolph held his bony thumb and index finger an inch apart. “About so much, all right? I’m helpless before your cherry pies, Mrs. Trotter. Totally helpless.”

He was chewing the pie blissfully when suddenly he stopped. “Oh, my. Have I got any spots on my clothes? My son gets so upset.”

Trotter put her fork down and studied him. “You look good, Mr. Randolph. Only just a li

ttle something on your tie.”

“Oh, mercy, mercy. The boy is always looking for some excuse to say I can’t take care of myself so he can drag me over to his big house in Virginia.” He dipped his napkin into his water glass and tried to dab his tie, completely missing the offending spots.

“Oh, shoot, Mr. Randolph. Let me get you one of Melvin’s old ties to wear. I don’t know why I still got so much of his stuff around anyhow.” She sniffed as if to clear away a memory of the late Mr. Trotter. “Gilly, run up to my room and look in the back of the closet, will you? There’s a dozen or more on a coat hanger.” Before Gilly got out the door, she added, “Just pick a nice one, hear? Not one of the real loud ones.” She turned, half apologetically to Mr. Randolph. “Sometimes in those last years, if Melvin was feeling low, he’d go out and buy some wild tie and wear it every day for a week.” She shook her head. “I guess I should praise the Lord it wasn’t some wild woman he was hanging round his neck.”

Mr. Randolph giggled. “Why don’t you bring me a wild one, Miss Gilly? I need to wake up that fifty-year-old senior citizen I’ve got for a son.”

Trotter threw back her massive head and belly-laughed. “You’re some kinda man, Mr. Randolph.”

“Well, you’re some kind of lady.”

Gilly fled up the stairs. These scenes between Trotter and Mr. Randolph made her insides curl. It was weird to see old people carry on, old people who weren’t even the same color.

But it was not that silly little flirtation that was bothering her. It was a vision of Mr. Randolph’s prissy fifty-year-old son poking around his father’s living room. So when she saw Trotter’s purse with its no-good fastener lying wide open on the bed, inviting her, practically demanding her to look in, she did so. Good god. Trotter must have just cashed her check from county welfare. Gilly did a quick count—at least a hundred. Another hundred would get her all the way to California—all the way to Courtney Rutherford Hopkins, all the way home.

She stuffed the money in her pocket, went to the closet, and found the hanger full of Melvin’s madness. She chose the gaudiest one there—four-inch-high ballet dancers in purple tutus, their pink legs pirouetting on a greenish four-in-hand. She tiptoed to her own room, slipped the fat wad of bills in her drawer under her T-shirts, and tiptoed back to Trotter’s door; once there, she slammed her feet down and noisily descended the stairs.

“Oh, my sweet baby, what have you done?”

Gilly’s blood went cold. How could Trotter know?

“That tie. It’s the worst crime Melvin ever committed. Rest his precious soul.”

“Oh, good, good.” Mr. Randolph was standing up, rubbing his wrinkled hands together in excitement. “Tell me about it.”

“You better not take this one, Mr. Randolph. It’s got all these fat women jumping around.”

“Really?” The little brown face beamed. “Are they decent?”

“Well, they ain’t naked, but they might as well be. Little purple flimflams—”

“Tutus,” prompted Gilly primly, gratefully recovering from her earlier shock.

“What?” asked Trotter.

“Tutus. They’re wearing tutus.”

Trotter roared. “Ain’t that perfect? Too-toos. Too-too skimpy for words.”

Mr. Randolph was already taking off his spotted black tie to make room for Melvin’s dancing ladies.

“You sure now, Mr. Randolph? I don’t want your son thinking I’m some kinda wicked influence on his good Baptist father.”

Gilly began to wonder if poor Mr. Randolph was going to choke on his own giggles. “He doesn’t ever need to know where the tie came from. I give you my solemn word”—this from a man hysterical with laughter. Jeez.

Trotter knotted the tie for him with the kind of assured expertise born of knotting one man’s tie for more than a quarter of a century. She stepped back to appraise the effect.

“Well—what do you think, Gilly, honey? That do something for Mr. Randolph?”

“It’s OK.”