“Once you became the gay divorcee up there in Toronto,” Trevor pronounced. “Oh, Rini told me all about it, don’t you worry!”

“All about what?” I said. Now the heat had invaded my face, the same the way it had with Jessica in the driveway. “I got divorced, it sucked! That’s all my mother knew and that’s all she wanted to know. She didn’t give a shit!”

Trevor, a moment ago, had seemed on the verge of foaming at the mouth but now he grew still and folded his arms.

“Maybe she didn’t give a shit,” said Trevor, “because she had no sympathy for a woman who’d walk out on her husband.”

I reeled. “I didn’t walk out on him!” Was this what Irene had told Trevor? Had my mother just assumed it must be all my fault? “He walked out on me!”

“No, Karie,” Kelli muttered at the other end of the table.

“Horse. Shit,” said Trevor, bending at the waist, toward me, to give especial emphasis to the second word. An air of glee had overtaken him. “He walked out on you because you didn’t give a shit about anyone but yourself. That’s what’s always been your problem, Rini said as much. You were working all the time, leaving him to his own devices —”

“I was working?” I sputtered. Working had been my spousal trespass?

“You never made him a priority. You never made anyone a priority. It was always about you, your own needs. That’s been you from day one. And you’re still fuckin doing it! And then!”

“And then what?” I shouted. I was surprised to hear myself shout, because a dull voice inside me this whole time had been mumbling something along the lines of: Fair enough. That’s what Irene said? Well, no surprise. Wasn’t that the subtext of all those fine’s over the years? That was my internal monologue. But the external effect of hearing all this was that my face was on fire and I was white-knuckling the edge of the table and barking in panicked response to Trevor’s and then. And then what? What was coming next? Maybe something worse. Something I didn’t even have the advantage of already knowing.

“And then — you wonder why the guy has to get shitfaced every night just to put up with you! You wonder why he’s off chasing co-eds!”

I rolled my eyes. Was this the best he had? “Co-eds?” I tried to infuse my voice with as much big-city disdain as I could. If Trevor was going to press my buttons, I could press his. “Nobody’s called them co-eds since, like, the sixties.” I hoped to convey in my tone the unspoken final part of that sentence, which to my mind was: you ignorant fucking redneck.

But Trevor didn’t even seem to hear me, let alone my subtext.

“Christ, I feel sorry for the poor guy. Sending you signals right and left. But they just go sailing over your head because you got it so far up your own arse. You resent my relationship with young people.” Trevor bobbled his head, quoting this line in a plummily accented, cartoon-pompous voice meant to evoke effeminacy amongst other undesirable, to Trevor’s mind, male qualities. He was sketching a quick impression of what he imagined a man who was married to me would be like. “And you standing there acting like you have no idea what he’s talking about!”