Free 1503933547 by Paul Pen Page B

an old Danish cookie tin. That was what the lid said. Behind us, my brother was riding the exercise bike, the pedal clipping the metal frame once every five seconds.
    I observed Mom’s face. Her profile sculpted by the fire. Once I found her in the kitchen looking at a photo. She was touching it with her fingers. It was her before going down into the basement. She was standing on some rocks, gripping her skirt between her legs. Surrounded by the white spray from a massive wave that must’ve soaked her an instant later. Mom knelt to show it to me. When I saw that face of smooth skin and perfect features, like an orthopedic mask over Mom’s scars, I seized the picture frame and threw it to the floor. The glass broke.
    On the sofa, I stopped the needle and thread. I kissed my mother’s cheek. I liked her eye that was almost shut. I liked the rough feel of her skin when she kissed me on the forehead before I slept. And I liked the clumsy eyelid that wrinkled up when she was concentrating on mending a shirt’s elbow.
    Her nose whistled after I kissed her. I pressed my mouth against her ear. “Did the Cricket Man come for me last night?” I asked.
    She let her shoulders fall and folded the shirtsleeve on her lap. She put the thread, needle, and thimble back in the sewing box. I stroked the wrinkly fold between two of her knuckles. The circle of burned skin at the base of the thumb. The wide, smooth scar near the wrist.
    “For you?”
    I nodded.
    “Why would he come for you?”
    I thought about the firefly jar hidden in the drawer. About how I could’ve suffocated the baby when I put it in his crib. The questions I’d begun asking myself about the world outside.
    “Because . . .” I hesitated.
    “And anyway, how’s an old man who doesn’t even exist going to stick you in a sack?” She pinched my nose.
    “I saw him.”
    “Are you sure?”
    I nodded with my eyes wide open.
    “Sure you’re sure you’re sure?”
    She said the words in a funny way to distract me. But I remembered the bangs. The antennae scraping the hallway ceiling. The clicking of his back-to-front knees.
    “I’m sure,” I insisted. “Maybe he came for the baby.”
    “For the baby? What has the baby done?”
    I shrugged, unable to find an answer.
    Then I got it. “Mom,” I said. I gave a long pause before continuing. “Mom, is the Cricket Man the baby’s father?”
    Her head fell forward, as if the neck had turned to mashed potato. She glanced at my brother on the bike to make sure he wasn’t listening.
    “You do say some silly things,” she whispered. “If your father heard you . . . Son, you have to listen to me. The Cricket Man doesn’t exist. You’re safe here.”
    “But I saw him.”
    “The Cricket Man doesn’t exist,” she insisted. “Anyway, you don’t even know how babies are made. We’re not on that page yet.”
    “I bet it’s not so different from how insects do it,” I responded. “And I’ve read a lot about that in my book.”
    Mom smiled. One eye involuntarily closed. “Believe me, son, it’s very different.”
    She picked up the shirt and took the needle and thread from the sewing box again to resume her work. A circular container made of transparent plastic fell onto the sofa. I examined its contents, moving it in my fingers.
    “What are these?”
    “They’re your milk teeth.” The container slipped. It rolled along the floor until the lid came off. The teeth scattered. My brother heehawed from the bike.
    “Go on, go,” Mom said. A black thread joined her mouth to the shirt on her knees. “I’ll tidy that up. But go before this needle has your eye out.”
    I took two of the teeth without her noticing.
    I ran to the hall. Dad was speaking to my sister from the bathroom door. The faucet was running. “Put it on,” he said.
    “I need to wash my face,” she responded.
    “And I need to lay this stuff in the bathroom.” Dad showed her the box of rat poison he had in his hand.
    “Lay it,