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of sleep. The floor above Grandmother Dolarhyde creaked as someone shuffled toward the bathroom.
A heavy thump on the ceiling - someone falling - and the cracked voice called in pain.
Grandmother Dolarhyde never took her eyes off the fire. She rocked faster and, in time, the calling stopped.
* * *
Near the end of his fifth year, Francis Dolarhyde had his first and only visitor at the orphanage.
He was sitting in the thick reek of the cafeteria when an older boy came for him and took him to Brother Buddy's office.
The lady waiting with Brother Buddy was tall and middle-aged, dredged in powder, her hair in a tight bun. Her face was stark white. There were touches of yellow in the gray hair and in the eyes and teeth.
What struck Francis, what he would always remember: she smiled with pleasure when she saw his face. That had never happened before. No one would ever do it again.
"This is your grandmother," Brother Buddy said.
"Hello," she said.
Brother Buddy wiped his own mouth with a long hand. "Say 'hello.' Go ahead."
Francis had learned to say some things by occluding his nostrils with his upper lip, but he did not have much occasion for "hello."
"Lhho" was the best he could do.
Grandmother seemed even more pleased with him. "Can you say 'grandmother'?"
"Try to say 'grandmother,"' Brother Buddy said.
The plosive G defeated him. Francis strangled easily on tears. A red wasp buzzed and tapped against the ceiling.
"Never mind," his grandmother said. "I'll just bet you can say your name. I just know a big boy like you can say his name. Say it for me."
The child's face brightened. The big boys had helped him with this. He wanted to please. He collected himself.
"Cunt Face," he said.
* * *
Three days later Grandmother Dolarhyde called for Francis at the orphanage and took him home with her. She began at once to help him with his speech. They concentrated on a single word. It was "Mother."
* * *
Within two years of the annulment, Marian Dolarhyde met and married Howard Vogt, a successful lawyer with solid connections to theSt. Louismachine and what was left of the old Pendergast machine inKansas City.
Vogt was a widower with three young children, an affable ambitious man fifteen years older than Marian Dolarhyde. He hated nothing in the world except theSt. Louis Post - Dispatch , which had singed his feathers in the voter-registration scandal of 1936 and blasted the attempt in 1940 by theSt. Louismachine to steal the governorship.
By 1943 Vogt's star was rising again. He was a brewery candidate for the state legislature and was mentioned as a possible delegate to the upcoming state constitutional convention.
Marian was a useful and attractive hostess and Vogt bought her a handsome, half-timbered house onOlive Streetthat was perfect for entertaining.
Francis Dolarhyde had lived with his grandmother for a week when she took him there.
Grandmother had never seen her daughter's house. The maid who answered the door did not know her.
"I'm Mrs. Dolarhyde," she said, barging past the servant. Her slip was showing three inches in the back. She led Francis into a big living room with a pleasant fire.
"Who is it, Viola?" A woman's voice from upstairs.
Grandmother cupped Francis' face in her hand. He could smell the cold leather glove. An urgent whisper. "Go see Mother, Francis. Go see Mother. Run!"
He shrank from her, twisting on the tines of her eyes.
"Go see Mother. Run!" She gripped his shoulders and marched him toward the stairs. He trotted up to the landing and looked back down at her. She motioned upward with her chin.
Up to the strange hallway toward the open bedroom door.
Mother was seated at her dressing table checking her makeup in a mirror framed with lights. She was getting ready for a political rally, and too much rouge wouldn't do. Her back was to the door.
"Muhner," Francis piped, as he had been taught. He tried hard to get it right. "Muhner."
She saw him in the mirror then. "If you're looking for Ned, he isn't home from..."
"Muhner." He came into the heartless light.
Marian heard her mother's voice downstairs demanding tea. Her eyes widened and she sat very still. She did not turn around. She turned out the makeup lights and vanished from the mirror. In the darkened room she gave a single low keening that ended in a sob. It might have been for herself, or it might have been for him.
* * *
Grandmother took Francis to all the political rallies after that and explained who he was and where