Lily and Dunkin

Mom makes me go with her to buy school clothes in the afternoon, which turns out to be significantly less miserable than I had imagined.

I get a couple pairs of jeans, three pairs of khaki pants, a bunch of short-sleeved, collared shirts and a pair of sneakers and shoes. When we’re done shopping, we eat grilled cheese sandwiches and ice cream sundaes at Friendly’s.

Mom actually looks happy, which is really nice.

I don’t ask where the money for all this stuff is coming from. Ever since Dad’s denture debacle, things have been pretty tight in the money department for us. Maybe Bubbie’s paying for everything. She’s loaded. Mom says her Bodies by Bubbie franchise—videos, products, private classes—is a phenomenon. By the size of Bubbie’s house, I’ll take Mom’s word for it.

I wonder how much money we had before Dad and the denture debacle, which happened just before we left New Jersey.

Dad came home, beaming. He was dressed in a wrinkled business suit that smelled like he’d pulled it from the bottom of a hamper loaded with dirty socks. Dad was whistling, like it was the best day of his life. His mood was contagious, and I got all excited, even though I didn’t know what we were excited about. I even remember what Dad was whistling: the “Happy Birthday” song, which was odd because it wasn’t any of our birthdays.

Mom’s face looked concerned, her mouth pinched and her eyelids narrowed, like she was trying to figure out what was wrong with this picture. An itch of worry spread over me, too.

“I’ve got it,” Dad said. And he swept Mom into a huge hug, twirling her twice. “We’re going to be rich,” he said. “Rich. Rich. Rich. Rich. Rich. Rich. Rich.” His eyelids were open way too wide.

Instead of sharing in his excitement, Mom sank onto the couch and put her palm over her mouth.

I wasn’t sure why Mom was being such a party pooper, but I was interested to see what Dad was so jazzed about. Maybe we would get rich from whatever this thing was. And maybe I could get a new phone, and we’d even move to a mansion instead of our little row house.

“Picture this,” Dad said, making a wide arc with his right arm. “Doug Dorfman, Denture King of South Jersey. I’ll sell dentures to everyone in the country. The world. Maybe even on other planets.” Dad laughed, but nothing was funny. He stood in his rumpled suit, as though waiting for me and Mom to cheer or something, but he didn’t say anything that sounded like a million-dollar idea. In fact, he wasn’t making sense. How would Dad sell dentures to everyone in the world? He wasn’t even a dentist. Sometimes, he didn’t even like to brush his own teeth and had stinky breath.

Mom shook her head slowly from side to side, but Dad didn’t seem to notice.

“There’s money to be made in this,” he said, leaping from one part of the room to the other. Leap. Leap. “Big, big money. And I’m going to make it. Whoa!” Leap. “Whoa!” Leap. “Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!” Leap. Leap. Leap.

Dad looked like the frog on that old video game, Frogger, avoiding cars in the road.

“Sit down, Doug,” Mom said. “Your jumping around is making me nauseated.”

“It’s going to be amazing,” Dad said. “I’m going to sell more dentures than anyone in the history of dentures. Isn’t that right?” he asked me, holding up his palm. So I high-fived him, even though I knew it probably irritated Mom that I did. I wasn’t trying to encourage Dad by high-fiving him, just trying to keep him from nose-diving in the other direction.

“I bought a billboard!” Dad shouted. “Right on the side of the highway, for everyone to see.”

“What?” Mom screeched. “You did what?”

I gave Mom a little space on the couch, in case she planned on totally freaking out.

“How much?” Mom asked in a quiet voice.

Dad waved her away. “It doesn’t matter, Gail. That’s not important. Don’t you see? We’ll make a thousand times what that billboard ad cost as soon as the orders start rolling in. Ten thousand times that amount when I expand to other states.” Dad twisted his hands together in a weird way in front of Mom’s face. I pressed my back into the couch. “Plus,” Dad said, “doesn’t Dorfman’s Dentures sound terrific? Absolutely terrific! Can you hear the beautiful alliteration? Doug Dorfman’s Dentures. It’s a winner, Gail. A wildly wonderful winner. Am I right or am I right?” He looked at each of us, his eyes bulging. “I’m right!”

Mom spoke softly, as though she barely had any energy left. “You have zero experience with dentistry, dentures, all of it, Doug. What made you think…what…how much did the billboard cost?”

Dad looked like someone had stuck a pin in his balloon. “You always do that, Gail. I’ve got this great idea…this brilliant idea and you…you always ruin everything.”

“Yup, that’s me,” Mom whispered from her corner of the couch. “The Official Ruiner of Everything.”

Then Mom went into the kitchen and made herself a tuna salad sandwich, while Dad continued to pace and talk to himself about his great new business idea.

I went straight to my room and played music loudly.

Now I wish I had stayed downstairs with Dad. Maybe I could have helped him.

—

Turned out buying an ad on a billboard cost everything we had. All of Mom’s savings from her years of working at the bakery were wiped out in one fell swoop. My small college fund vanished—poof! Mom said their retirement fund—what little there was—was drained, too. And Mom couldn’t get the money back no matter how hard she fought with the billboard people. Nonrefundable. No exceptions. Mom said she wished she’d taken Dad off of all their joint accounts years ago, but she hadn’t.

So, when Mom and I packed up our lives and drove out of New Jersey heading toward South Florida and passed Dad’s billboard on the highway—DOUG DORFMAN, DENTURE KING—with Dad wearing the crumply business suit and a hokey crown that must have been Photoshopped in and a huge, fake white smile—Mom gave the billboard her middle finger.

That’s how we left New Jersey: broke and with Mom’s middle finger standing at attention.

I know Mom was cursing the billboard people for not returning their money, not Dad. Mom knew he couldn’t help it.

But she looked so sad and angry that I reached into our bag of snacks, unwrapped a Jelly Krimpet Tastykake—her favorite kind—and handed it to her. Those things could always make Mom smile.

Well, almost always.