Fatal Attraction
—
Mallory Smart
THE FIRST TIME MY WIFE brought Glenn Close into bed, I didn’t say anything.
It wasn’t actually Glenn Close. It was a framed eight-by-ten publicity still from Fatal Attraction that she’d found at an antique store in Joliet. The cheap plastic frame had a crack running through the left-hand corner and smelled vaguely of Lucky Strikes. She set it on her nightstand between a bottle of melatonin and a dying lavender plant that was supposed to help reduce anxiety.
“She’s watching over us,” my wife said when she kissed me goodnight.
I figured it was a phase.
Three months later there were seventeen Glenn Closes in our cluttered suburban house.
There was Glenn Close from Fatal Attraction in the bedroom. Glenn Close from Dangerous Liaisons in the hallway. Glenn Close from Air Force One hanging above the toilet. A magazine clipping of Glenn Close smiling at the Oscars beside our wedding photo in the living room. A black-and-white Polaroid of Glenn Close that she got off eBay was taped to the refrigerator with a magnet shaped like Wisconsin from House on the Rock.
I stopped counting after seventeen because that's around the time I found one in the freezer.
“Why is Glenn Close in the freezer?” I asked as if this was something people said in a typical conversation.
My wife looked up from her iPhone.
“To preserve her.”
I nodded and just put the picture back behind the Oberweis Butter Pecan Ice Cream where it belonged.
That was the sort of answer I’d become accustomed to.
The thing was, my wife wasn’t what I’d call a “fan”.
Fans buy merchandise and attend conventions. Fans get psyched when their favorite celebrity appears on television.
My wife acted more like Glenn Close was a distant relative that she’d been trying to reconnect with.
Whenever a movie featuring Glenn Close was streaming, she’d stop whatever she was doing and quietly sit down on our plaid couch like she was arriving for church.
She never spoke during these screenings. Just watched.
Studied. Occasionally she nodded as if receiving instructions.
One night I woke up at 3 a.m. and found her standing in the living room.
Every lamp in the house was off and the motion-activated night light in the hallway was unplugged.
Moonlight spilled through our blinds.
My wife stood in the center of the room surrounded by photographs of Glenn Close arranged in a circle like a séance.
“What are you doing?” I whispered as if Glenn Close would hear.
My wife didn’t look at me. Just muttered.
“Listening.”
“To what?”
A long pause.
“She’s worried about the basement.”
We didn’t have a basement. We lived in a ranch house.
The next morning I checked just in case.
The crawlspace hatch beneath the hallway rug was open. When I say crawlspace, I’d like you to imagine Walter White’s or John Wayne Gacy’s. Not big.
I was certain I’d never seen the hatch to it open before.
Maybe I had. Maybe I hadn’t.
I spent the afternoon convincing myself there was nothing strange about any of this.
Marriage requires flexibility.
Everyone has hobbies. Some people golf. Some people collect coins. My wife accumulated Glenn Close.
Then one afternoon I came home from work and found a woman sitting at our kitchen table. For one impossible second, I thought it was Glenn Close.
Same sharp cheekbones. Same posture. Same patient expression.
The woman smiled.
My wife stood beside her, beaming.
“There you are,” she said. “You finally made it.”
I looked from one woman to the other.
“Who is this?”
The stranger folded her hands.
“My name is Linda.”
“Okay.”
My wife nodded.
“She’s the first one.”
“The first what?”
“The first Glenn Close.”
I laughed because there wasn’t another available response.
Neither woman joined me.
Linda looked almost sympathetic.
“You think Glenn Close is a person,” she said.
The room suddenly felt too small.
My wife squeezed my shoulder.
“That’s adorable.”
Years later, after the divorce and the house sold. After my wife moved somewhere I could never quite locate on a map, I still occasionally find photographs.
Inside library books. Tucked beneath windshield wipers. Slipped between bills.
A Glenn Close smiling from some forgotten decade.
The strangest part isn’t that they keep appearing. The strangest part is that they’re getting older.
Not the photographs.
Glenn Close herself.
Each image shows a different woman.
Different face. Different hairstyle. Different life.
Always smiling. Always watching.
Waiting for me to recognize her. Waiting for me to understand what my wife figured out long before I did.
That there has never only been one Glenn Close… •
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Mallory Smart is a Chicago-based novelist and the author of The Only Living Girl in Chicago and I Keep My Visions to Myself. Her forthcoming Midwest horror collection, Book of David, is available for preorder from House of Vlad.
Website | Twitter
It wasn’t actually Glenn Close. It was a framed eight-by-ten publicity still from Fatal Attraction that she’d found at an antique store in Joliet. The cheap plastic frame had a crack running through the left-hand corner and smelled vaguely of Lucky Strikes. She set it on her nightstand between a bottle of melatonin and a dying lavender plant that was supposed to help reduce anxiety.
“She’s watching over us,” my wife said when she kissed me goodnight.
I figured it was a phase.
Three months later there were seventeen Glenn Closes in our cluttered suburban house.
There was Glenn Close from Fatal Attraction in the bedroom. Glenn Close from Dangerous Liaisons in the hallway. Glenn Close from Air Force One hanging above the toilet. A magazine clipping of Glenn Close smiling at the Oscars beside our wedding photo in the living room. A black-and-white Polaroid of Glenn Close that she got off eBay was taped to the refrigerator with a magnet shaped like Wisconsin from House on the Rock.
I stopped counting after seventeen because that's around the time I found one in the freezer.
“Why is Glenn Close in the freezer?” I asked as if this was something people said in a typical conversation.
My wife looked up from her iPhone.
“To preserve her.”
I nodded and just put the picture back behind the Oberweis Butter Pecan Ice Cream where it belonged.
That was the sort of answer I’d become accustomed to.
The thing was, my wife wasn’t what I’d call a “fan”.
Fans buy merchandise and attend conventions. Fans get psyched when their favorite celebrity appears on television.
My wife acted more like Glenn Close was a distant relative that she’d been trying to reconnect with.
Whenever a movie featuring Glenn Close was streaming, she’d stop whatever she was doing and quietly sit down on our plaid couch like she was arriving for church.
She never spoke during these screenings. Just watched.
Studied. Occasionally she nodded as if receiving instructions.
One night I woke up at 3 a.m. and found her standing in the living room.
Every lamp in the house was off and the motion-activated night light in the hallway was unplugged.
Moonlight spilled through our blinds.
My wife stood in the center of the room surrounded by photographs of Glenn Close arranged in a circle like a séance.
“What are you doing?” I whispered as if Glenn Close would hear.
My wife didn’t look at me. Just muttered.
“Listening.”
“To what?”
A long pause.
“She’s worried about the basement.”
We didn’t have a basement. We lived in a ranch house.
The next morning I checked just in case.
The crawlspace hatch beneath the hallway rug was open. When I say crawlspace, I’d like you to imagine Walter White’s or John Wayne Gacy’s. Not big.
I was certain I’d never seen the hatch to it open before.
Maybe I had. Maybe I hadn’t.
I spent the afternoon convincing myself there was nothing strange about any of this.
Marriage requires flexibility.
Everyone has hobbies. Some people golf. Some people collect coins. My wife accumulated Glenn Close.
Then one afternoon I came home from work and found a woman sitting at our kitchen table. For one impossible second, I thought it was Glenn Close.
Same sharp cheekbones. Same posture. Same patient expression.
The woman smiled.
My wife stood beside her, beaming.
“There you are,” she said. “You finally made it.”
I looked from one woman to the other.
“Who is this?”
The stranger folded her hands.
“My name is Linda.”
“Okay.”
My wife nodded.
“She’s the first one.”
“The first what?”
“The first Glenn Close.”
I laughed because there wasn’t another available response.
Neither woman joined me.
Linda looked almost sympathetic.
“You think Glenn Close is a person,” she said.
The room suddenly felt too small.
My wife squeezed my shoulder.
“That’s adorable.”
Years later, after the divorce and the house sold. After my wife moved somewhere I could never quite locate on a map, I still occasionally find photographs.
Inside library books. Tucked beneath windshield wipers. Slipped between bills.
A Glenn Close smiling from some forgotten decade.
The strangest part isn’t that they keep appearing. The strangest part is that they’re getting older.
Not the photographs.
Glenn Close herself.
Each image shows a different woman.
Different face. Different hairstyle. Different life.
Always smiling. Always watching.
Waiting for me to recognize her. Waiting for me to understand what my wife figured out long before I did.
That there has never only been one Glenn Close… •
Mallory Smart is a Chicago-based novelist and the author of The Only Living Girl in Chicago and I Keep My Visions to Myself. Her forthcoming Midwest horror collection, Book of David, is available for preorder from House of Vlad.
Website | Twitter