Red Dragon - Thomas Harris [80]
The surgeon had troubled to read up on the problem and decided, correctly, that repair of the infant's hard palate should wait until he was five. To operate sooner would distort the growth of his face.
A local dentist volunteered to make an obturator; which plugged the baby's palate and permitted him to feed without flooding his nose.
The infant went to the Springfield Foundling Home for a year and a half and then to Morgan Lee Memorial Orphanage.
Reverend S. B. “Buddy” Lomax was head of the orphanage. Brother Buddy called the other boys and girls together and told them that Francis was a harelip but they must be careful never to call him a harelip.
Brother Buddy suggested they pray for him.
# # #
Francis Dolarhyde's mother learned to take care of herself in the years following his birth.
Marian Dolarhyde first found a job typing in the office of a ward boss in the St. Louis Democratic machine. With his help she had her marriage to the absent Mr. Trevane annulled.
There was no mention of a child in the annulment proceedings.
She had nothing to do with her mother. (“I didn't raise you to slut for that Irish trash” were Mrs. Dolarhyde's parting words to Marian when she left home with Trevane.)
Marian's exhusband called her once at the office. Sober and pious, he told her he had been saved and wanted to know if he, Marian, and the child he “never had the joy of knowing” might make a new life together. He sounded broke.
Marian told him the child was born dead and she hung up.
He showed up drunk at her boardinghouse with his suitcase.
When she told him to go away, he observed that it was her fault the marriage failed and the child was stillborn. He expressed doubt that the child was his.
In a rage Marian Dolarhyde told Michael Trevane exactly what he had fathered and told him he was welcome to it. She reminded him that there were two cleft palates in the Trevane family.
She put him in the street and told him never to call her again. He didn't. But years later, drunk and brooding over Marian's rich new husband and her fine life, he did call Marian's mother.
He told Mrs. Dolarhyde about the deformed child and said her snag teeth proved the hereditary fault lay with the Dolarhydes.
A week later a Kansas City streetcar cut Michael Trevane in two.
When Trevane told Mrs. Dolarhyde that Marian had a hidden son, she sat up most of the night. Tall and lean in her rocker, Grandmother Dolarhyde stared into the fire. Toward dawn she began a slow and purposeful rocking.
Somewhere upstairs in the big house, a cracked voice called out 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 middleaged, 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