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successful merchants in La Crosse, purveyors of “staple and fancy groceries.” Business increased every year, and the city could easily accommodate another such store. In 1909, George Gein became proprietor of a small meat and grocery shop at 914 Caledonia Street.
    It didn’t take long, however, for problems to manifest themselves. George clearly could not make it on his own. Augusta knew what had to be done. She already had complete charge of their domestic life. Now she must take total control of their business affairs as well. The entries in the 1909 and 1911 La Crosse City Directories speak volumes, not only about George’s increasingly pitiable position in the world but also about the nature of his and Augusta’s relationship. In the earlier volume, George Gein is listed as the owner of the store. Two years later, Augusta is named as the proprietor. The entry for George Gein reads “clerk.”
    In the meantime, they had had another child. Though Augusta did not feel especially close to her firstborn, she attributed her detachment to the child’s gender. It was, after all, a boy. Things would be different with a daughter. And so she clenched her teeth and allowed her husband to commit the foul deed upon her again. During the weeks that followed, she prayed every night for the Lord to bless her with a baby girl.
    On August 27, 1906, Augusta gave birth to her second child. He was a boy, and they named him Edward Theodore. When Augusta first heard she had delivered a second male child, she felt bitter, betrayed. But Augusta was not the kind to give in to despair. She was made of stronger stuff. And so she took the swaddled newborn in her arms and made a sacred vow.
    This one would not grow up to be like all the rest of them. Men. Those lustful, sweating, foul-mouthed creatures who made use of women’s bodies in such filthy ways. This one, she promised, would be different.
    Augusta would see to that.

3

    NORMAN BATES, in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho
    “ A boy’s best friend is his mother . ”
    Y ears later, he would be asked the same question, time and again: “Tell us something about her, Eddie. What was your mother like?”
    As soon as he started to think about her, his eyes would fill with tears and his throat grow so swollen that he’d have trouble swallowing. She was pure goodness, he’d finally say. Not like the others. They got what was coming to them. But she didn’t deserve so much suffering.
    All her life, she had slaved and prayed and struggled to save him from the evils of the world. And he had tried to be as good as possible. But somehow, he always seemed to fail her.
    He remembered the time she had put a few coins in his hand and instructed him to go to the German bakery a block from their home to buy a loaf of bread. They were still living in La Crosse, so he couldn’t have been more than seven. Somehow, by the time he reached the shop, the coins were gone. For a long time, he stood on the street corner, fighting back tears, terrified to go home. When he finally did find the courage to return and confess, his voice convulsed by sobs, she looked down at him with that mixture of bitterness and sorrow that never failed to fill him with the deepest self-hatred. “You dreadful child,” she had said in a quiet, heartbroken voice more awful than any scream. “Only a mother could love you.”
    She would never have made such a stupid, unforgivable mistake. Whatever needed to be done, Augusta Gein could always be counted on to do it right, without foul-ups or complaints. She was, by far, the ablest one in the family. And the strongest.
    When he thought back to his childhood, he usually pictured her standing in their old grocery shop, an immense, looming presence who did nearly all the work—waited on the customers, handled the cash register, kept the books. Meanwhile, her poor excuse of a husband—his father—shuffled about the store in that shrunken, defeated way of his, rearranging the goods on the