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Order this writing that appears in the one-of-a-kind anthology Instant Karma the Down in the Dirt September-December 2023 issues collection book		get the 422 page September-December 2023 Down in the Dirt 6" x 9" ISBN# perfect-bound paperback book:

Top of the Line

Heather Rutherford

    Daddy always displayed his Mercedes in the driveway, only parking it in the garage at night. Its metallic burgundy finish glinted in the sunlight, his car so clean it reflected Mom’s lilacs and roses that lined the new aggregate driveway. When he bought the long, wide sedan, he told our college-professor neighbors, “Paid cash. Business is good. I do alright for myself. Considering I’m self-made.”
    My grandparents had owned a neighborhood market and bakery. Daddy and Uncle Paulfhis older brother—never went to college but grew up learning to run the business. Poppi and Nonna died within ten months of each other the year I started middle school. Daddy and Paul inherited the side-by-side bakery and grocery store. They eventually built two more stores and expanded the bakery. They supplied bread to local restaurants, cookies and cannoli to families and local businesses who needed sweets.
    My brother, Chris, was eight years older and went to a state college for less than a year before failing out. The story my parents told was that Chris decided to return home and work for our father and Uncle Paul. Chris did that for a couple of years, but it caused so many fights between Daddy and him that Chris moved upstate to the Adirondacks. He said he wanted nothing to do with the business and stopped coming home except for a short yearly Christmas visit.
    When I was in eighth grade, Daddy and Uncle Paul closed one of the new stores. “The rent,” Daddy had said. “You wouldn’t believe what those bastards want to charge us next year.” The following year the other new store was robbed and vandalized. Smashed windows, broken eggs, and exploded soda cans covered the floors. They closed that one too.
    “How,” Mom had asked, “are we going to make it on just the bakery and the old store?”
    “I’m expanding the bakery. Don’t you worry. We’ll come out ahead.” He’d wrapped his arms around her, danced her across the kitchen until her cheeks turned pink.
    Daddy always wanted one of his kids to play tennis, and neither Chris nor my older sister, Stephanie, had interest or ability. When I demonstrated both Daddy began calling me his “superstar” and joined a club so I could take lessons and play in tournaments. They even hired a private coach during my first year of high school.
    Mom would pick me up from training in her decade-old van. “It was once top of the line,” she’d say. “But now...” She’d shake her head as she turned out of the tennis club. “Your father and his Mercedes.”
    I overheard them argue about her van once.
    “Failed inspection!” She told him the cost of four new tires and about the shameful sticker on her formerly enviable minivan’s windshield. She’d expected a new car, but he had the tires replaced. She didn’t speak to him for three days.
    Daddy washed his Mercedes in the driveway every weekend. He’d taught me to drive in Mom’s van and, winking, said, “I’ve got my ear to the ground for a car for you, Marybeth. But keep that between us.”
    That spring my best friend, Patty, and I stayed after practice every day to work on our serves. One day our coach canceled because his son fell at his school playground and needed stitches. Patty’s mom gave me a ride home. I was home hours earlier than usual, stopped at the mailbox, and scooped up the mail. As I walked along the stone walkway to the front door, I flipped through the stack of envelopes, catalogs, and a few college brochures for me. A letter from our church, St. Joseph’s, something from Stephanie’s school—St. Bonaventure University—and a bill from a car lease company. Red capitals announced THIRD AND FINAL NOTICE.
    I stacked the mail on the kitchen counter. From upstairs my mother called to me, said she’d be down in a minute, but I trotted up the steps toward the door of her sewing room. She and my father met when she was a seamstress at a local tailor and he came in with a new suit needing alterations. She hadn’t worked in years, and I had no idea what she did with herself all day besides occasionally sewing new covers for throw pillows or curtains for the living room. That day she met me at her sewing room door and closed it behind her.
    “When can we shop for prom dresses? It’s only two months away,” I said.
    She fiddled with her wedding rings. “Can I trust you to keep something to yourself?”
    I nodded, knowing who she wanted to keep it from.
    She turned, opened the door, gestured to the ivory wedding gown on her mannequin, and lowered her voice. “I’m just helping a friend’s daughter who can’t afford alternations.”
    Simple, with no lace whatsoever, the only details on the dress were braided, narrow shoulder straps and some ruching at the chest. I loved it and asked if we could find a prom dress that looked like that.
    “Oh, you won’t believe your luck, Marybeth!” She pulled a neon-pink gown from the closet. Stephanie’s old prom dress. Mom held it out to me, then spread the material between her fingers. “Look at this workmanship. We’d never find anything close to this here or in the city. It’s in perfect condition.”
    The dress—bedazzled with crystals on its spaghetti straps and around the deep V neckline—was horrifying. “Stephanie’s way taller than me—”
    “I’ll alter it so it looks like it was hand-sewn for you!” She eyed my chest, considerably smaller than my sister’s.
    “But it’s pink. I don’t like it. At all.”
    “Trust me, sweetheart. This is the dress for you!” She shooed me out, humming fast and forced, the way she did when she wanted me to think she was happy.

* * *

    A week later three college coaches showed up at my tennis match. I was so anxious I worried I’d throw up on the court. Halfway through the tied match, the umpire deemed my second serve a fault.
    Daddy shouted, “Are you shitting me? Open your eyes, asshole!”
    The courts, the bleachers fell silent. I lost the match.
    As we walked through the parking lot to the Mercedes, Daddy took my arm and said, “You just ruined your scholarship chances.”
    They argued about money that night, Mom saying she wanted to go back to work, maybe start her own alterations business.
    He said, “I provide for this family.”
    I hoped he didn’t know about the rows of wedding and prom dresses in her sewing-room closet.
    Another month went by before I checked the mail again, finding bills from the tennis club, the golf club, and an envelope from an attorney. When I went inside Mom told me to come upstairs and try on Stephanie’s dress. I cursed under my breath and hoped she’d abandoned her plan to make Stephanie’s pink, sequined monstrosity mine.
    She had me stand on a chair in her sewing room while she turned and squeezed me. “Stop fidgeting.” She stepped back to look at me head on, then in the full-length mirror, unpinned and repinned. I devised a plan to go to my father for money to buy a dress that didn’t make me look like a wannabe stripper in bubblegum pink.

* * *

    The next night I woke in the dark to my father barking at someone as he rushed down the hall. My mother’s voice, high with panic, pecked him with questions: “Is the fire department there? Was anyone inside? Jesus, Mary, and Joseph...”
    “I’ll handle it!” Daddy said. His heavy footsteps pounded down the stairs.
    Wearing only Chris’s old Conte’s Market T-shirt, I followed them to the kitchen. “What’s happening? Is the store on fire? Should we all go?”
    Daddy, his phone to his ear and his other hand on the door to the garage, turned to me. “Put some clothes on, for Christ’s sake, Marybeth.”
    “I’ll be ready in a minute!” I rushed toward the steps.
    “You’re not coming. I mean don’t parade around the house half-dressed.” He closed the door behind him. The garage door cranked open. Daddy, in his dark-red Mercedes, rolled out.
    Mom and I dropped into chairs at the kitchen table. Her red-rimmed eyes stopped me from asking questions. The icemaker whirred. New cubes clattered into a bin deep in the freezer. She stood and made coffee. There was no point going back to sleep.
    “This may be in the news, but you are not to say a word about it at school.” She drew her bathrobe belt tight. “Do you hear me?”
    “Why?”
    “We don’t need your friends’ parents in our business.”
    I worried all day at school and at tennis practice too. I made so many errors that Coach Stark sent me home early.
    At home Daddy’s Mercedes in the driveway surprised me. I found him inside, relaxed, smiling, and opening a bottle of wine.
    “Don’t you worry,” he said. “It’s going to be fine. A terrible thing, of course. Decades of history—poof—gone. But we have insurance. We’ll come out on top.” He kissed the top of my head, gave me a bear hug, and asked about my next tennis match.

* * *

    The Sunday before prom I stood on the chair in the sewing room. Mom had removed all the plastic crystals from Stephanie’s old dress, replaced the straps with braided material from three inches of hem that she’d trimmed. Still pink, but not as horrible.
    I gazed out the window as she crouched beside me, making final adjustments. A white tow truck slowed and backed into our driveway. Its brakes squealed as it came to a stop behind the Mercedes.
    “Mom...” I pointed.
    She glanced outside, then closed her eyes for the briefest moment. “I don’t want you to worry—it goes without saying that you’ll keep this to yourself—but you should know that there’s an insurance investigation about the fire. It’s ridiculous. Your father’s under a lot of pressure, but he has it under control.”
    Two hulking men climbed from the truck as its chain dropped.

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