Glamour // Claire Geddes Bailey
An interpretive essay on Christine D’Onofrio’s exhibition cat cat cat.
According to Sarah, the Devil wore bows upon bows upon bows upon bows. Pink satin ribbons littered through her hair and wound round her whole body, ends forever flouncing. Sarah said even the Devil’s pupils were in the shape of bows, and that she’d never seen anyone so beautiful in her entire life. She said the Devil was also kind, and had helped her when her heel broke on the dance floor.
“After that we went out to the smoke pit and talked for a long time,” Sarah said. “She told me she could help with things, that if things happened to me that I didn’t want, she could take care of it. Like if I was sick, or broke, or didn’t have a place to live – she said she dealt with all of that, that’s actually her job. She even said if I or any of my friends ever needed an abortion and couldn’t get one to just call her.”
“Like she knows someone who could do it?” I asked.
“No I think she just can make it go away. Like magic,” Sarah said. Then Sarah said she didn’t think she’d ever become pregnant accidentally because of who she was in love with.
“Who?” I asked.
“The Devil of course,” she said. “Well, her name’s Jenny.”
I said the Devil very likely had the capacity to impregnate her.
“If I were pregnant with Jenny’s baby I would keep it for sure,” Sarah said, “but I doubt she’d do that. She told me she doesn’t want kids.”
“You already talked about that?” I asked.
“Sure, of course! We talked about everything.”
So Sarah was in love with the Devil.
cat cat cat by Christine D’Onofrio in the Main Gallery, September 8 - October 21, 2023.
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The Devil came to me in the form of a tomcat. He was big and orange, short-haired, proud chest, smiling mouth. He had lovely pink satin ribbons tied round his throat, ankles, and the tip of his tail. I’d opened the door for my gray tabby, Misty, and in he came behind her.
He rubbed up against my shins, purring. When I reached down to touch him, he pushed his forehead up against my palm, then shimmied to guide my hand along the full length of his body. When I reached his tail’s end, he turned back to look me in the eye, blinking slow, and I gasped – his pupils, like Sarah had said, were shaped like bows.
“The Devil came to me in the form of a tomcat. He was big and orange, short-haired, proud chest, smiling mouth. He had lovely pink satin ribbons tied round his throat, ankles, and the tip of his tail. I’d opened the door for my gray tabby, Misty, and in he came behind her.”
I figured I should throw him out, but I thought I would just feed him first. By the time I had fed him, I loved him completely. Throwing him out was something someone else would do, but not me – of course not me. I adored him. I named him “Baby.”
He stayed.
cat cat cat by Christine D’Onofrio in the Main Gallery, September 8 - October 21, 2023.
☆
The Devil arrived at Lou’s doorstep as a bouquet of flowers. The bouquet was unlike other bouquets – rather than a tidy bunch, this arrangement was completely unkempt. A scraggly cornucopia, leaves and vines spilled enormously from the centre and onto the ground, flowers of many colours and type – quite uncoordinated – profuse throughout. All the same, the bouquet was more beautiful than any we’d seen before. Each stalk was tied from tip to bloom with ribbon, bows stacked all the way up, the bunch’s base a flowing cacophony of pink satin. Like Jenny’s and Baby’s, these ribbons fluttered perpetually, breeze or not – and the bouquet miraculously required neither vase nor water, but stood as placed, gracefully unaided.
Lou invited us over to see it, and when we came, each of us tried to pin down what made it so attractive, messy as it was. At first I suggested the ribbons, gathering all that plant matter into a mesmerizing Devil’s signature – but that didn’t seem to cover it. Sarah noted the colours of the blossoms, but the colours really were familiar, not unlike those in Lou’s garden just outside, or even the colours of flowers that grew alongside the highway midsummer. Maybe it was timing, Lou said – everything was perfectly in bloom. But any fresh bouquet would be so, we protested. Jenny said not to worry about it, that it was simply the bouquet’s supernatural charm that made it nice to look at.
“And try touching it,” Jenny said, one hand already fingering a chicory blossom. “Lou, feel the Lamb’s-ear. It’s divine.”
cat cat cat by Christine D’Onofrio in the Main Gallery, September 8 - October 21, 2023.
When we sat down to dinner, the bouquet stood in the centre of the table. Lou suggested we each take some nasturtium from it to garnish the first course. Jenny smiled glitteringly, approving. She said it was good to share and good to eat from the Devil. The bouquet was no less abundant for us having taken from it.
“It’s a fallacy that the field will wind down to dirt for having been shared. Keep talking; the flowers will come back. You’ll see.”
When we moved to sit comfortably, stomachs full, on the floor of the living room, Lou moved the bouquet too, maintaining its right place in the centre of us. We stayed and talked and laughed late into the night, flowers leaning to listen in.
“Everything was more fun with the Devil. Everything more loving and abundant. When we thought back to before the Devil had come, it seemed as if there had been a shroud between us – we’d thought we’d been good friends, but we hadn’t been really.”
☆
Before long, Jenny and Sarah had moved in together. They were inseparable, though we still saw as much of Sarah as ever. Jenny wasn’t one to keep her lovers away from their friends – in fact she loved more than anything to gossip with us. We caught her up on all the scenarios and characters in our lives, and she entertained us with stories from the angels and hell. She wasn’t good at keeping secrets. None of us were.
“Okay I really shouldn’t tell you this,” she’d begin, laughing, “so just don’t tell anyone I told you.”
We’d lie on our stomachs in my backyard, Baby flicking his tail between us, laughing and gossiping for hours. Lou never went anywhere without a sprig from the bouquet, and often brought honeysuckle for us to keep beneath our tongues.
Everything was more fun with the Devil. Everything more loving and abundant. When we thought back to before the Devil had come, it seemed as if there had been a shroud between us – we’d thought we’d been good friends, but we hadn’t been really. Without realizing it, we’d been loyal to something else. That was no longer true. Now we knew true connection.
☆
Baby and I became closer too. Every night he arrived in my bed and slept curled beneath my chin. In the morning, I woke to his tremendous purr and kneading paws. I stopped setting alarms, coming to rely on his sense of rhythm. He always knew when I needed to be up, when to ask for breakfast, and when to suggest we might go outside. When I was at work, I missed him – more, I was guilty to admit, than I missed or ever thought of Misty. Baby had a glamour to him – it wasn’t just the ribbons and bows. The way he moved had style. His meow had a wink. Sometimes, when I was cooking or dusting the light bulbs, he’d come and ask politely to be lifted. I’d pick him up and cradle him like an infant, rocking him back and forth.
“Baby baby baby,” I’d sing. “You’re my Ba-by.”
cat cat cat by Christine D’Onofrio in the Main Gallery, September 8 - October 21, 2023.
He purred louder than ever at this, shutting his smiling eyes and surrendering to the embrace. He loved to be coddled and cared for, and I loved to dote on him. I knew he didn’t really need it – being both a big tom and the Devil – but it was a performance I enjoyed.
I suspected, too, that he helped with the housework. I’d leave a sink full of dishes and come back to find them gleaming in the drying rack.
“Thank you Baby, sweet boy,” I’d say when this happened, and he’d meow happily and lead me over to the couch or the television or the speaker so we could do whatever it was he wanted us to spend our time doing instead.
Beyond cuddling, he loved to dance together, and we sometimes stayed up dancing long past midnight. Music sounded better with Baby – listening was a full-bodied mode. Sound arrived not to my ears but to my whole being. To hear was to move; to move was to be.
☆
For their part, Lou became a walking almanac for the bouquet. They came to know each plant thoroughly, its uses and qualities, how to care for and propagate it. They gathered seeds to plant in their garden next spring, pressed calendula and foxglove in book pages, and hung lavender and mugwort from the ceiling to dry. Sometimes when we came over, we’d hear Lou’s voice drifting from inside and expect to find someone else there, but it was just the bouquet.
“Oh, I was asking about a recipe for tonight,” they’d say. They touched and spoke with the leaves, addressing them gently with large and small questions – about life, about growth and regeneration.
cat cat cat by Christine D’Onofrio in the Main Gallery, September 8 - October 21, 2023.
They always cooked for us when we came over, and we left more slaked and satiated than it seemed we should – the food and drink more nourishing in the presence of the Devil’s arrangement. Our meals were now adorned with the bouquet’s beauty, its bounty worked into every dish. We plucked at will as we ate, topping our plates with fennel and poppyseeds – though not everything in the bouquet could be trusted. Lou once grabbed my wrist to stop me moments before I ate a deadly belladonna berry – which Jenny then snatched and squeezed precisely into her eyes, one and then the other.
“For my pupils,” she said, winking. “It’s what gives them their charm.”
“The bouquet twinkled at our chatter, shining its leaves at us and leaning tendrils flirtatiously towards our mouths. Feeding off our friendship, the bouquet quickly replenished whatever we’d had taken for the meal.”
Dessert in particular was an event – Lou made towering cakes and glamourous puddings, each overflowing with tricoloured heartsease, orange and red nasturtiums, spearmint sprigs, tarragon, and sugared sage. We dug into these confections indulgently, never holding back, and as we ate, we talked.
The bouquet twinkled at our chatter, shining its leaves at us and leaning tendrils flirtatiously towards our mouths. Feeding off our friendship, the bouquet quickly replenished whatever we’d had taken for the meal. Like Lou, the bouquet was a generous host, and happiest when we were all together.
We left dinners at Lou’s full of a shiny connective quality, floating home warm and buzzing. Sarah and Jenny bumped merrily against each other on the sidewalk, hardly able to wait for me to turn down my street before they put their hands on each other, rushing home to make love.
☆
Wouldn’t it be terrible if the Devil left? Wouldn’t the heartbreak be more than any of us could bear? We all admitted to thinking it.
Jenny says she’ll never leave – that we’ll be together forever, even – especially – in the afterlife.
If Jenny says that she means we’re going to hell. We laughed.
Of course we were going to hell.
Claire Geddes Bailey is a writer, artist, and baker based in Tkaronto/Toronto. Their work turns towards desire, community, and the senses, while attending to the intertwining of place, narrative, and language. Their writing and visual art has been featured by Polygon Gallery, CSA Space, dreams comma delta, and Artspeak, among others. Their cakes (published under the online moniker @spool__oven) have been featured by The New York Times, nolisoli, and CBC/Radio-Canada. They were Curatorial Intern at Nanaimo Art Gallery from 2020-21, and are currently an MFA candidate in creative writing at University of Guelph.