When I was 9 or 10 years old, the tooth fairy failed to visit.

Before I went to sleep I placed my tissue-wrapped tooth under my pillow. When I awoke I sent my hand right there, ready to grasp a flat spendable quarter. Instead I encountered the wrapped tooth.

I took that tissue package to my father. He was still asleep. I marched up to his side of the big bed (the left), and touched his shoulder. He always woke easily. He showed me his eyes.

“Daddy,” I blurted. “The tooth fairy didn’t come!”

“Ohh!” he said at first. He shifted his torso upward and swung his feet to the floor. “Oh, honey. It’s not that she didn’t come.”

By then he was sitting on the edge of his bed. He removed the tissue from my hand. “She was here,” he continued, “but she couldn’t get your tooth. You were tossing around in your bed and she was afraid you’d wake up. Children are not allowed to see her, you know.

“So she came to me. She gave me your quarter. Now I’m supposed to get the tooth from you, and tonight she’ll come back to me for it.”

He stood and walked to his tall chest of drawers. From the top of it, where he kept his watch and the things his pockets carried when he wore clothes, his hand acquired my coin and gave it to me.

I remember the cascade of my reactions: disappointment when I woke, a little outrage mixed with avarice while I approached him, and at the end: satisfaction with my money and admiration for my father and the slight fading of a tooth fairy’s form.