It helps to understand that Alex normally bounces out of bed like a Tigger. On school days, I wake him up at 6:15 and it’s like there are springs under his pillow, ejecting him into me with an, “Okay Dad, good morning,” and a ready smile. On weekends, these days, I get to sleep as late as 7:30 sometimes. By the time I make my way out of bed and downstairs, Alex’s smiling face and waving hand are the first things I see, beaming at me from the couch where he perches himself in wait, having himself arisen god-knows-how-much earlier.
So when I tried to wake him up yesterday morning and he wouldn’t budge, I knew something was off. But you know how it is. There’s rigamarole and not enough time, so I ran back downstairs to make breakfast, calling up over my shoulder as I fled, “You gotta get up, fellas! Breakfast will be ready in five minutes!”
Ten minutes pass. Then ten more. Even Jack - normally the laggard - is downstairs, but no sign of Alex. I go back up, zigzag around the dog and into the kids’ room, and find Julie sitting on Alex’s bed, talking in soft and comforting tones, and stroking his hair. The dog’s followed me in. He’s at my side, we’re both looking at Julie with question marks painted on our faces.
“The tooth fairy didn’t come,” she says with a heartbreaking mixture of factuality and sympathy. “Alex is feeling sad.”
Shit.
I sat down with them, joined in the hair-stroking, asked stupid questions like did you have the tooth in a plastic bag because those are crinkly and sometimes I think the tooth fairy gets scared by the noise and *are you sure the tooth isn’t gone and that you’re not still dreaming? *
He was insistent. The tooth was still there, it was in a specially-designed paper envelope just for teeth, there was no money, he wasn’t dreaming, the tooth fairy was punishing him, there were more tears where these came from.
I lifted him up to hug him tightly, cradled his head against my chest, and masterfully slipped my free hand under the pillow to exchange the special tooth envelope for the $5 I’d meant to put there the night before. And by “masterfully,” I mean he totally caught me. I had thought he was consumed enough by grief that a powerful dad-hug would amplify that distraction just enough to provide adequate cover for my hair-brained rescue operation. That, I suddenly remembered, is where thinking gets me.
“Dad!” he protested. “Dad, don’t!” More tears, but now with a little laughter. Progress.
“Don’t what?”
He lunged for my hand, trying to pry it open and reveal the tooth envelope.
“What are you doing,” I protested. “You’re violating my personal space.”
More laughter.
“Gimme my tooth back,” he said, and then, “this is pathetic.”
Where does a nine-year-old get devastating accuracy like that? Pathetic. Yikes. Still, I slipped the toothvelope into my slipper before letting Alex pry open my hands and find them empty.
“Where did it go?”
“What are you talking about?”
“The tooth,” he said, “where did it go? Your pocket!”
I let him check my pockets and find them empty.
“Your shoes!”
“This has gone too far,” I said, my face now stern. “I have to get showered.”
I went into the bathroom, started the bath, and moved the tooth to an undisclosed location in the medicine cabinet, then went back to his room. The roundtrip time was maybe 10 seconds.
“Too far.”
He’d retrieved the $5 from under his pillow while I was away, and was holding it in both hands, head hung to look at it, crying again.
“I love you, Alex, and I’m so sorry about the tooth fairy,” I said, “I don’t know what else to say.”
Disappointed child and disappointing father had to get on with things, after all.
“Okay,” he said, and stood up straight and faced the stairs and went down to carry on.
It took him years to make it to the bottom, each plodding step echoing beyond the hallway passage, through impossible corners of memory and time. I’m not sure exactly how old he was when he reached the ground floor. I could hear it from the bathroom, though. His final step boomed like in the movies when a huge and magical book closes.
I shut the bathroom door, closed the faucet, and lowered myself into the bath. Too cold, I thought.
Too damn cold.