“Or like Nora’s friend Em—like what Em would say, if she ever said anything,” Aunt Martha chimed in.

“I didn’t learn that women were treated like sexual minorities from Nora and Em,” my mom said. “I’m a woman, you know,” Little Ray said. She was wearing a snug little sweater, and when she said the word woman, she stuck out her boobs and shook them at her easily shocked sisters.

This made everyone but Aunt Abigail and Aunt Martha laugh. Naturally, Uncle Martin and Uncle Johan laughed the loudest, but Molly was there—the ski patroller had a loud laugh—and even my grandmother laughed a little.

It was wrestling season; because I had a cauliflower ear, it hurt when I laughed. When I touched the little plaster cast, Mr. Barlow (who was also laughing) frowned at me and shook his head. My ear was pulsing, but I could hear just fine.

“I was treated like a sexual minority when I got knocked up and had my one and only,” my mom was saying. “Unwed mothers are treated like shit, you know,” she said, looking straight at my evil aunts.

“What I mean, sweetie,” my mom said to me, in a much nicer voice, “is that I had some exposure to how sexual minorities get treated—when I was just an unmarried mom. I mean before I was with Molly, sweetie—I know you know what I mean.”

I must have nodded—perhaps cautiously, given my throbbing ear. “Of course the Kid knows what you mean, Ray,” Molly said, but my mother had worked herself up; she couldn’t stop. She was talking to me, but I knew who her audience was: my seething aunts, who were glaring at her across the dining-room table.

“Molly and I are actual sexual minorities, sweetie—women like us get treated even worse than unwed mothers,” my mom said.

“I know,” I told her, but she was looking at the little English teacher. Elliot was sitting next to her, between her and Molly. From the way Mr. Barlow suddenly jumped in his seat, I could tell my mother must have touched him (just as suddenly) under the table.

“The smaller the sexual minority, the more vulnerable the group—they get picked on the worst, don’t they?” my mom asked Elliot.

“That’s right, Ray,” the snowshoer said.

Like homophobe, transgender wasn’t yet part of our national vocabulary, but I saw how my awful aunts were looking at Elliot Barlow. They were on to him as a cross-dresser; whenever this dinner party with a context happened, it was definitely after the message from Moses.

With her empty fork, not a magic wand, my grandmother appeared to be conducting an unseen, unheard chorus—her daughters’ momentarily silent but eternally discordant voices. “Girls, girls,” Nana softly chided them, as if their glaring at one another was as bad as raising a ruckus.