My mother's dishes were a hodgepodge. We had tin plates from India, and mismatched old china. We drank from coffee mugs and jelly jars and anodized aluminum that sweated from the cold liquids inside. A lot of the serving dishes were Tupperware. The utensils didn't match. You had to be careful to choose the right spoon when you ate ice cream -- a lot of them would bend. Mom spent money on books, but not on dishes, and not on her clothes. Not on the things she called "functional". Clover would scream at her:

"Don't you know how embarrassing this is? I can't even have my friends over for dinner!" Not that she had many friends.

Her dad's second wife had everything perfect in the apartment they lived in, in New York City. Clover showed me pictures of the apartment once, as a brag. I didn't care, but the pictures explained a lot -- when she came back from her summers there, she always battled with Mom and me. Sometimes Daddy and I sat in the kitchen and watched. I thought it was entertaining. Clover was the only one who could get under Mom's skin enough to make her angry.

"It's embarrassing," Clover yelled. "It's white trash."

Mom hated stereotypes. "If that's the sort of thing you're learning in New York, I have to talk to Owen. These are false values. Plates don't tell anything about their owner. Things aren't important. People are."

"God! That again? You're crazy! Why does everything we own have to be ugly? It's all -- " she looked around, waving her hands, "It's all tacky. It hurts to look at it. Like living in Mississippi."

Mom's face was milky white, a color to go with her red hair. When she felt emotion, her face flushed. She was about to get angry, and the warning signals -- the two red marks -- showed on her cheekbones.

"Please go to your room," she said. "We'll talk when you calm down."

We heard Clover's door slam. She was probably glad to be alone. She was always embarrassed after she showed emotion.

Mom sat at the table with Daddy and me. "What do you think?" she asked him.

"I think you two should settle your own problems. Leave me out of it." He handled Gabe and me, but he liked to leave Clover to Mom.

She turned to me. "Do you think I'm being unfair?"

What did I know? I was ten years old, and I hadn't even discovered boys yet. I cared about dancing, and sports, and horses, and my Daddy. I said, "Uh, I don't know."

Clover sort of won the argument, after that blowup. This had been going on for years, and Mom decided that if Clover cared that much, she'd give in. She told her we could have nice plates and utensils, but Clover would have to pay for half, and the spending limit was a thousand dollars. Clover was fifteen, and she didn't have any money. She spent most of her allowance on clothes -- black ankle-length cardigans, slacks and matching blouses, things that looked good and lasted. The next few days she gave Mom the silent treatment. Then she started calculating how to get the money. I saw the wheels turning in her head. Before three more days had passed she was all sweetness. She was even nice to me, almost for the first time. She asked her New York Dad for the money as a Christmas present.

Mom wasn't big on Christmas -- Thanksgiving was her favorite holiday -- but she kept track of the family dynamic. She seemed to walk around with her head in the clouds, but she was tuned to the family frequency, and she knew that Owen hadn't sent Clover an extravagant gift, this year.

Two days before Christmas Mom spoke to Clover. I was in the bathroom, and they were in the hall, so I overheard.

"I'm sorry. I called your father the other day, and he said he mailed your gift. It's a busy time of year for the Post Office -- "

"I already got it," Clover said.

"But there hasn't been any package."

"I'll show you later."

She waited until everyone had opened their gifts, and then she took a check from her pocket and gave it to Mom.

"Five hundred dollars? That's very generous. What are you going to do with the money?"

"Spend it on the place settings," Clover said. She had to explain, because Mom had forgotten about the plates and silver. Almost four months had gone by. Mom looked at Daddy.

"You lose," he said.

She frowned. " 'Lose'? Is that the appropriate term?" She turned to Clover. "All right. If you'll endorse this over to me, I'll deposit it tomorrow and we can start looking."

I went along because I wanted to watch. Clover was upset when she saw how expensive things were, and that she couldn't get them all. She felt cheated.

"That's as much as I'm willing to spend for something frivolous," Mom said. "I'm here because it's important to you. If you want to spend more money, it can't come from Owen. You'll have to earn it."

"How? I can't get a job. I'm only fifteen."

"You'll think of something. Maybe you can tutor other students in math. What about this?" She held up a plate that was plain white except a simple blue ring around the edge.

Clover couldn't choose, and they didn't find anything after an entire day of looking. I stayed home the next time. There hadn't been any fireworks, and I wasn't up for another boring shopping trip. Shopping never interested me. It was what you did when you needed something, and you got it over with as fast as you could.

In the morning Mom made it clear that the offer expired when the stores closed that evening. "I can't spend much more time on this." They went to the factory outlet north of the river. Clover got full place settings, including salad plates, but they weren't Wedgewood. They were some simple no-name brand. She had to do without the gravy boat and the other accessories, and she had to get simple glasses. No crystal. And simple stainless steel for utensils. That was it. Sometimes when we sat down to eat, she frowned. The food was still served in the Tupperware. She wanted beautiful things around.

She hated living in east Lawrence. She wanted to live with Muddy. Muddy was her dad's mother. Gabriel gave her the name when he was too young to pronounce "Grandmother". She'd taken him and me as her grandchildren, just as much as Clover. I don't think Muddy ever accepted the divorce. She still treated Mom like a daughter-in-law -- no, a daughter. Daddy was the only one Muddy wasn't warm to, which was strange. Everyone else liked him, and Muddy blamed Owen for the divorce, so she should have liked Daddy. Unless she thought he wasn't a good provider.

Clover loved going to Muddy's house in the city because Muddy had a big house in a beautiful part of town. Clover liked the big house, and the furniture, and she would walk through, running her hand over the walnut chests and the mahogany mantlepiece and the oak panelling. She would look at the paintings, and admire the prisms in the light through the leaded-glass windows. Her favorite place was the rose garden in the back yard. Mom loved that, too. They enjoyed the flowers together. I saw them more than once, pointing out the colors and shapes to each other, bending to sniff the scents, feeling the petals. Slowly walking the rows. They shared those roses the way we shared our evening meals. They looked so different from each other. Mom was short and haphazardly dressed, Clover was tall and never had a double crease in her slacks. Mom with her punk-rock hair, short and spiky and red. Clover with her beautiful auburn hair, so thick and smooth and never a strand out of place, that fell below her shoulder blades. Mom pale, Clover dark. But they were both the same degree of skinny. And they were both flat-chested, so different from the way I turned out.

Coming home from those trips they talked to each other. In a day or two Clover would go mute and retreat to her collection of antique dolls and her calligraphy and her ironing board and her math books. Mom would look wistfully after her when Clover came home and drifted up the stairs with a "hello", and she'd ask her to help in the kitchen. But Clover would claim homework -- a winner with Mom, who loved to see us study. Clover was the lost one. Mom felt closer to Gabe, and even to me, as much trouble as I caused.