II.
She remembered the first time. It wasn't winter then, it was July, when she was still in school. It was hot in the city. Suddenly the shock of heat had been broken in two as if by a hammer and drenched Trois-Rivières. She wasn't the only one working for her father then. There was another girl, a real Frenchwoman, named Marie-Claude. She answered the door, typed things, charmed clients.
A group of businessmen huddled in front of the door that afternoon like preening peacocks, afraid to get their smart Blandine suits drenched. Cécile abandoned her window-cleaning; a dark shape pushed past the businessmen saying, " 'Scuse me, 'scuse me," in a hard American accent. A slippery, grating voice.
Marie-Claude wiped her hands on her Parisian-cut pant suit and approached the door. "Eh bien, M'sieur, comment je pourrais . . .?"
"Murray Clod? Or do you just go by Clod?"
Cécile stifled a laugh. The man was hidden by a huge black trench coat, with a copy of what looked like the Wall Street Journal held in front of his face. He was wearing faded purple gloves. Marie-Claude was unimpressed by the bohemian act, especially by his mispronunciation of her name as it was posted on her name tag.
"So you are American. 'Ow can I help?"
The man took something out of a pocket, possibly a business card, and held it up behind the newspaper, as if examining it. "The workshop of Mawn-sewer Bernard Blandine. Expert tailor of Trois-Rivières. Frequented by Canadian Parliament members. A real professional."
"Yes," said Marie-Claude chirpily. "M'sieur Blandine makes custom suits, retro, of fine materials 'e buys 'imself. Discreet, old-fashioned, and . . ."
Marie-Claude trailed off, and Cécile looked up to see why. Marie-Claude's face had drained of all color, but that only mirrored the one staring down at her. He had put the newspaper down, and there was something blotchy, nightmarish staring out. Cécile got over her initial horror quickly, though, and realized it was a poorly-done makeup job, a clown disguise. For what reason . . . well . . . Her mother, who had been dead a long time, loved opera. Pagliacci, the sad clown, who always wore a smile . . .
"Now Clod," the clown said, advancing on the pretty Parisian, "didn't your mother tell you it's not polite to stare?"
Marie-Claude was trying to look down, but Cécile could see she was incapable of doing so. "I . . ."
"Don't you people know about laughter, about being amused? Tell me, Clod, do I amuse you?"
Marie-Claude closed her gaping jaw and mastered herself, with difficulty. "I think you want to speak to the boss about a suit, yes?"
He chuckled. "Run and fetch him, Murray. Go on. Run. Flee. GIT!"
He shouted the last word, and Marie-Claude almost shrieked. She turned on her heel and moved as quickly as her spiky shoes allowed. The clown grinned sinisterly in her wake, then turned to Cécile in the window, who he hadn't seen before.
"Well, well, well, who are you?"
Cécile met his gaze levelly. "Marie-Cécile Blandine. The daughter."
"Another Murray!" He guffawed. "So—your old man."
Cécile lifted her eyebrow. "Like she says, 'e makes splendid suits."
"That a fact?" He curled a purple-gloved finger at her. "C'mere." She moved toward him, head stiff on top of her spine. "Take this." He handed off the enormous trench coat. It was so heavy she almost stumbled with the weight. She hung it up on the coat rack near the door.
The many years later, Cécile remembered being more fascinated than disturbed. He was wearing the palette of purple and green her father later composed his suits of, but everything was patched together from different fabrics. He looked like he'd gotten in a fight with a sewing machine.
"Classy, eh?" he asked her. "I do all my own sewing . . ."
She gave him a bemused look. Just then the trembling Marie-Claude led in Cécile's father. Cécile went to him and took his hand. "I hear you do good work," said the clown. "I'll pay up front."
Cécile looked at her father, questioning. Her father nodded. "Hey—Blandine. I'm talking to you. You look a little young to be going deaf." Cécile glared at the clown, then touched her father's shoulder. "I've never been ignored before," said the clown, starting to get angry. "I don't like it." There were spots of white among the red blotches, teeth that were clenched like the fists he was making.
" 'E can't speak, all right?" Cécile snapped.
The clown raised a gloved finger to his ear. "But muteness doesn't run in the family. Your father'd better say something before I get really ticked off."
" 'E can't! Don't you get it?" Cécile flushed. " 'E had his tongue cut out."
Blandine gripped her hand. The clown stared at her. Then he opened his mouth to laugh. "Don't laugh. If you laugh, I swear to God you're going to leave here worse off than 'im!"
"Gallic temperament!" the clown tsked. "Clearly, Marie-Cécile, this isn't a subject to be laughed about."
"Oh really? And what would you know about it?"
His eyes were dark, set back into the black makeup, crudely done. "Cécile. That name comes from the Latin," he mused. "It's the source for the word for worm. It also means blind." Cécile stared at him, stunned. "And I think for all your hot air, Cécile, you're a bit blind."
She was about to retort when he drew lines at the corners of his mouth with his index fingers. Looking closer, Cécile could see there were scars there. She could handle staring at a silly make up job, but the scars quieted her.
"Do you want to know how I got these scars?" he asked. He looked past Cécile to her father. "I'll tell you. I was working for a newspaper. I was a reporter, and I had found out all these juicy details about politicians being bribed, officials selling out, bad deeds being done, sins being committed. My editor said, 'you publish this, you're going to get the sack.' I said, 'I don't care.' The paper's financial backers said, 'you're going to get blackballed out of the city.' I said, 'what? Me worry?' The mob said, 'you publish this, we make sure you never blab again.'
"They could have . . . I dunno . . . broken my fingers. Or . . . cut off my thumbs. Prevent me from writing, you see. But they wanted something a bit more visual, that I couldn't hide. So they used a pair of safety razors—"
Cécile's father tensed, the veins standing out in his neck. He lurched forward and took the clown's hand in his own and shook it with conviction. Cécile knew this was remarkably like what had happened to her father in his younger days, when he was a tailor's assistant in Montréal. And for that reason it made him surge with fraternal zeal. For that reason, it made Cécile suspicious.
Her father elbowed Cécile. " 'E can make you a suit."
"Purple and green," said the clown, smacking his lips. "With a tie. And lots of pockets."
"You could dye your 'air green," said Cécile nonchalantly.
"Why do you say that?"
"Oh, I don't know . . ." Cécile trailed off. "I 'ad a boyfriend who was dyeing his 'air every week, and . . ."
The clown's eyes seared. "That's a very shrewd idea, Marie-Cécile. Maybe you're not so blind after all."
Cécile looked down, knowing that she was short for her age, willowy, and with hair and skin so pale she looked almost albino.
Her father tapped her and so Cécile said, " 'Ow will you pay?"
"Money, money, money," said the clown, licking his lips. He reached into his trouser pockets and pulled out a wad of Canadian dollars.
"What, right now? We 'aven't prepared a receipt," said Cécile, taking the money hesitantly.
"Keep it. Think of it as an investment."
"You mean, to buy our silence."
"Have you looked at a dictionary lately, Oh Blind One? That's not the definition of investment, is it?"
Cécile's father was trying to laugh, but of course no sound but a racking one from the back of his throat came out. Cécile winced, feeling herself die a little, and gave in. "If you come this way, my father will take your measurements."
"Oh goody," said the clown, rubbing his hands together.
"Who should we make the bill out to?"
The clown started patting himself down as if looking for something. "The Clod walked away with one of my cards," he said. "But here's another one." He handed her a playing card with a joker on it.
"The Joker," she said. He winked at her as he followed her father into the fitting room.
Marie-Claude quit when she heard Blandine had taken the Joker on as a customer. Cécile tried to tell her father her misgivings, but his conviction that he was a righting a counterpart's wrongs in the face of adversity and corruption, in a way no one had ever righted his own wrongs, made him abandon all sanity. And Cécile wasn't the only one who thought so.
Normally Cécile was meant to help her father with fittings. This usually meant she got groped when her father wasn't looking—and sometimes even when he was. Begging off for sickness, she managed to avoid getting up close and personal with their "unique" new client. When the Joker mentioned in her hearing, upon picking up the suit, that he was disappointed she hadn't been there measuring his inseam, she vowed to put carbolic acid into the green hair dye he'd started to wear. But somehow, she never got around to it.
The suit she and her father designed was a thing of twisted beauty. Left to her own devices, Cécile might have gone to design school at University and interned in Montréal, New York, maybe even Paris. She never quite managed that disappearing act. The Joker, too, was impressed, with her father's handiwork. So impressed that he came back twice a year, without warning, for his suits—all identical. Purple. Green. Purple. Green. When he tried to pay her father more than what they were worth, her father got angry. The Joker seemed bemused that her father's overriding principal wasn't greed. She hoped he would never find out the combination to her father's will: drink, wounded pride, bitterness with the world. A dead wife. A lost son.
Her father couldn't give voice to any questions, but Cécile could and did. Where did he come from? What did he do? Why the Halloween costume? How did he really get the scars? She thought at first he might be a gambler, what with the card tricks. But he was always alone. What did he spend his money on, beside hair dye and suits? She kept expecting the cops to show up at their door, with similar questions. One day, she thought, he's going to use one of those knives on you—or Papa.
And part of her put up no protest.
A/N: Thank you for the reviews, everyone.