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Angela holds the phone above her head and twirls it like a baton. She imagines she is doing something graceful, but none of it is very smooth. The cord keeps getting in the way, wrapping around her wrist. The tequila and soda she has balanced on the arm of the chair, a welcome addition to this phone call with her sister, soon becomes an impediment. She thinks she should probably buy an end table. When the receiver crashes against the hardwood floor, she can hear Susan start screeching, her voice far away.

"What the fuck are you doing? Are you even listening to me?" The tinny voice reaches Angela and she brings the phone back to her ear, trying not to laugh.

"Sorry, Suse. The phone just dropped." She makes a mental note to actually try and call Susan by her new name. Moon, Moon, Moon, she chants inside her head.

"Did you hear anything I just said?" Susan shouts.

Angela knows that even in the face of the truth, if she flatly says, "No, I wasn't listening, I was baton twirling the phone," Susan would continue to ramble. She needs to "touch base," with Angela - this is how she puts it - two or three times a week. This, despite the fact that many calls end in Susan screaming and hanging up. Sometimes Angela wonders if Susan just has a higher tolerance for chaos, because the truth is that these calls wear Angela out. She has taken to screening her calls and only picking up if she knows she can handle it or if she's been fortified by a few drinks, like today.

It had been a relief a few years ago when one day Susan up and left for Asia. No more rants and tears and shouting on the phone. No more long, middle of the night messages. Blessed silence. Not that Susan hadn't tried to call collect. Every couple of months, Angela would pick up out of guilt, accept the charges, and hear all about the high drama her sister was manufacturing on the other side of the world.

And then, without warning, Susan was back with a new name and hair on her legs so long you could braid it. She had gone vegetarian on her travels and decided to become an organic farmer. In pursuit of this goal, she was living in a smelly, ant-infested trailer on a former commune north of Whistler, with her stoner boyfriend, Paul. Now the chaos in Susan's life was with her landlord. It seemed petty to Angela, like all of her sister's fits, which had been the reason she was twirling rather than listening.

"What I was trying to say," Susan says, "is that with her house in the heart of my garden, the energy isn't going to flow through. That woman has bad energy. She's going to stop things up."

"Why don't you move the garden?"

"Move the garden? You can't just move a garden! That's where it is."

"Well, why can't you put it somewhere else? Closer to your trailer and further from her house?"

"Have you noticed we're surrounded by trees? Do you have any idea how long it would take to clear a piece big enough for a market garden? If Paul and I want to make any money this year, we've got to use what's there. Her house just happens to be right smack dab in the middle of it." She pauses to breathe. "And if that bitch thinks that she can just stand on her porch all season giving me the evil eye and spewing out her poison, she's got another thing coming."

"Well that doesn't seem like a very Christian thing to say," Angela states. Her sister hates it when she brings up 'the Christian years,' a phase of Susan's when she belonged to an evangelical church and could faith heal and speak in tongues.

"You know I'm not a Christian," Susan spits. "What the fuck is wrong with you? Have you been drinking?"

Angela ignores the question. "I just think a little tolerance is in order here considering she's been nice enough to let you live on her land." Angela pauses and she can hear her sister taking deep breaths. "It just seems like you're always getting yourself in knots, Suse." Oops, did it again. Moon, Moon, Moon. "Lighten up a bit. Why can't you plant your little seeds and water them and watch them grow and not worry about anybody's bad energy? And why do you need to think about all this now? It's only December."

"I happen to be thinking ahead! It's a good thing to do, you know. You should try it, Ang, and then maybe you could get yourself out of your lousy dead-end job."

Angela picks at a callus on the palm of her hand and says nothing. Her drink is nearly empty and she knows the phone cord won't reach into the kitchen to make another.

"And you know what else?" Susan continues. "I'm sick and tired of you calling me Susan. I chose a new name for myself, I even legally changed it and my own sister doesn't respect me enough to use it."

"It's just so weird. All my life you've been Susan and now you're ..." She forces herself to say it. "Moon. I just can't get used to it."

"You make it sound like this is the first time we've had this conversation. If you respected me, you'd honour my decision."

Angela couldn't stand it when Susan used words like honour. "Enough with the respect already! It has nothing to do with respect. It's not fair to ask your family - who has called you Susan your whole life - to suddenly call you Moon. I just can't."

What she doesn't say is that it's Susan's arrogance that makes her not want to use the new godforsaken name. Susan was always pushing people past their limits, trying to be the centre of attention, the most important person in the room. Angela finishes off her drink. "And anyway, what can I call you for a nickname? Moony?" As soon as it's out, she knows it was the wrong thing to say. She starts to pull the phone away from her ear, but the blast doesn't come.

"I don't want a nickname. I want you to call me the name I've chosen for myself." Her sister sounds suddenly defeated and Angela feels bad. Bad for twirling the phone and being difficult, but mostly for her sister who had to change her name at all.

"Listen, speaking of my dead-end job, I've gotta go to bed so I can get up tomorrow." She hears Susan light a joint and inhale deeply.

"Angie, I'm sorry I said that about your job."

Nothing like a little pot to mellow her out, Angela muses.

"You have to do what you need to do." Susan's voice is tight as she holds the smoke in. "You have to be on your own path. Just like Paul and I." She coughs. "You know it's amazing. I look around this beautiful piece of land and I think to myself that this was all meant to be. I feel so connected to the earth here, you know?"

"I've gotta go. Are you still having your Christmas party on Saturday?"

"Yeah. You're still coming aren't you?"

"I'm planning on it. I just need to get my hands on a car."

"Mom's coming. She can give you a lift."

Angela groans. "You invited Mom?"

"I need to bring the separate parts of my life together, Ang. I want you and Mom to see more of my new life, meet my new friends." Susan is drifting into her sickeningly sweet, stoned voice and Angela interrupts her.

"I'm not driving up with Mom. You know how she drives."

"Well, you can't both come in separate cars. That's ridiculous. It's not good for the environment. And Ang, it's a Winter Solstice celebration, not a Christmas party. Paul and I don't celebrate Christmas, remember?"

***

The next morning, the bells above the door of the used bookstore jangle. Angela looks up to see her mother entering the shop in a flurry of wind and bags and hair. Her mother is the only sixty-year-old woman that Angela knows who has big hair.

"I brought you a coffee." As usual, no preliminary greetings. "And the paper." Her mother adds, "It's Wednesday." This is code for one of the best days to look for jobs in the classifieds. Her mother doesn't approve of Angela's job at the used bookstore and wears the same pinched look every time she comes in the shop, like she can't stand the smell. Angela doesn't think her mother has looked at even one book and she never takes off her coat.

Her mother slaps the paper down on the counter. "I can't believe you're wearing that ratty old thing to work!"

Angela looks down at her favourite cardigan. "It's still in good shape."

Her mother raises an eyebrow. "It's falling apart, Angela." She glances around the shop. "I guess it doesn't matter here."

Her mother drops her bags on the floor, undoes her coat buttons and tugs impatiently at her scarf. "Your sister invited me to a Christmas party weeks ago and I haven't heard another thing. I don't know if I'm supposed to bring anything or if she's changed her mind and doesn't want me there now. That kid is up and down like a yo-yo. Have you heard from her?"

She doesn't wait for a response and starts rummaging around in one of her bags. "What do you think of this?" she asks, holding up a red angora-like sweater that has black and white sequins on it. Oh God, Angela chants inwardly, please not for me, not for me. "I'm going to wear it to the party if I'm still invited."

"It's nice, Mom," Angela lies. "And yes, we're both invited. Susan wants to integrate us into her new life." She rolls her eyes.

"New name, new boyfriend, new career, new place to live. New everything," her mother says, folding the sweater. "Must be nice to be so free. All those changes. I can't keep up."

It wasn't the first time that Angela had heard bitterness in her mother's voice. She wonders if perhaps there isn't a part of both of them that envies Susan's ability to barge forward in life.

"She could do so much better than him though. I don't understand it." Her mother's eyes widen and she shakes her head. "Well, are we supposed to bring anything?"

"She didn't say. She was too busy yelling at me."

"I can't believe you two are still fighting. After all these years. You're supposed to outgrow that."

"I wasn't fighting, Mom. Susan was yelling at me."

"You must have said something that upset her," her mother says and bends to put the sweater back in the bag. "You only have each other, you know."

"I know, I know. Like you've always told us." Angela considers this a crazy thing to say to children. If there were more siblings, it would be okay to discard one, but because we only have each other, we have to get along?

"Maybe I'll bring some of my shortbread."

"But it's not a Christmas party, Mom."

"What?"

"It's a Winter Solstice celebration. Suzy gave up Christmas, remember?"

"Oh for God's sake," her mother mutters and starts to wind the scarf back around her neck.

"So I'll pick you up on Saturday? Around one?" Her mother looks up. "Weren't you going to get your hair cut?"

"I did."

"Oh," she says, frowning. "They didn't take much off."

"I guess they didn't," Angela sighs.

***

Her mother picks her up at two o'clock that Saturday. Angela knew that her mother would be late, as always, despite the reports of snow up the coast. And she knew her mother would pretend not to remember the time. "Did I say one o'clock? Are you sure? I think I said two." And then it would be another hour until they were out of the city because they'd have to stop for coffee and gas. Her mother would drive at a crawl all the way, forcing cars to beep and pass her when they could, giving her the finger as they zipped by. Anticipating all of this, Angela decides a little pick-me-up is in order. She starts drinking at noon and by two o'clock, when her mother beeps impatiently in the parking lot like Angela is keeping her waiting, is just tossing back the dregs of her third drink.

"You smell like smoke," her mother says when Angela gets in the car. She fans her face with a black leather glove and opens the window. "That's godawful. I can't believe any daughter of mine would smoke after what I've been through." Her mother having lost a breast to cancer quit smoking and went from two packs a day to an activist for non-smoker's rights in record time. She became the impetus behind the enclosed non-smoking room at Bingo Palace, her favourite hang out. "We shouldn't be the ones caged up," she would say shaking her head, "but we're still the minority. It's a tragedy really."

Her mother accelerates too fast and the car starts to fishtail in the parking lot. "Jesus Murphy." She gets the car under control and stops it at the end of the driveway. She sniffs the air, her nose tilted up. "Don't tell me you've been drinking!"

Angela tries to look offended. "Why would you say that?"

Her mother starts fussing with the heater and eases the car into the street. "I know the smell of booze, Angela." She has both hands on the steering wheel, her knuckles small hard bumps under her gloves. "I just can't believe it, that's all, after the way you harassed your father."

"Dad was an alcoholic. There is a difference."

"That's your version. Your father was a good man. He was a good provider."

"That's not just my version, Mom. He drank himself to death. You can't still be in denial about that."

"Your poor father. You gave him such a hard time. He tried his best."

"Whatever," Angela says and turns to stare out the window. She fights back the tears, biting down on her tongue, concentrating on street signs.

They don't speak until her mother stops for gas just before they get on the highway. "Do you want a coffee?" This is her mother's idea of a peace offering and Angela accepts it with a nod.

***

The drive takes five hours. It should have taken three. The car crunches up the laneway and Angela's mother snorts at the chicken crossing sign. Cars and trucks are parked haphazardly in the yard and the windows of the cabin are steamed. Angela stomps up the wooden stairs and grimaces at the mountain of shoes and boots outside the door. She pries hers off and adds them to the pile.

"I am not leaving my shoes out here to get frozen. For God's sake," her mother says.

Angela walks in to the smell of pot, laced with sweat and her sister's laughter booming over the sounds of babies crying and Bob Marley. "What's that smell?" her mother hisses in her ear. People are turning to look at them with slow, stoned smiles.

"They're hippies, Mom. They smoke a little dope." Immediately, she wants to distance herself from her mother and feels the sting of guilt, like a towel being snapped at sensitive flesh. She grabs the bottle of scotch from her bag and walks into the kitchen. Two men with dreadlocks stand against the counter, holding babies. Neither of them seems to notice her. One of them is smoking a joint. When a few ashes drop on his baby's head, the man wipes them away with the back of his hand and keeps talking.

She finds a clean glass and rummages around in the freezer for ice cubes. She thought scotch would be a safe bet at a hippie party because all you needed was ice, no mix. As it turns out, there is no ice either. She pours two inches of scotch into her glass, hides the bottle in a lower cupboard and wanders into the main room.

Her sister sits on the floor, her bare feet tucked under the Asian sarong she wears casually knotted over one hip. She wears a white peasant shirt to show off the tan she still sports from her travels. Turquoise beads woven into her hair drip down onto her shoulders. She has her earnest expression on, a furrowed brow combined with a wry smile and when Angela looks at the people around her sister, she sees a familiar sight. Rapt faces.

As if feeling her stare, Susan glances up at Angela and her eyes go directly to the glass in her hand. She does not pause her story to say hello. "And I said to him: 'Look at this animal. This animal is being abused. All for the sake of the almighty buck.'" It was Susan's 'elephant in Thailand' story. Angela had heard it at least five times. Next Susan would tell her audience how she tried to "educate" the locals about "selling out" and the dangers of America. When Angela first heard the story, she'd asked her sister what else these people were supposed to do, now that their country was being overrun by westerners. Susan had shouted that Angela didn't know what she was talking about because she'd never even left Vancouver.

She blocks out the sound of her sister's voice and surveys the room. The wood stove in the corner is drawing people like a magnet and others are sprawled over the few pieces of furniture or standing talking. Susan's bitchy landlord can't be all that bad, Angela thinks, if she's letting Susan have the party in her house. Paul comes up behind Angela then and kisses her on the cheek. A disgusting wet kiss. "Hey sister," he says. "How's it goin'?" Angela hates it when he calls her that. She wants to say, "I am not your sister."

He has a bag of chips in one hand and is bringing them slowly to his mouth. His eyes are bloodshot.

"Yeah, pretty good, Paul. How about you?"

"Right on," he says in a sluggish monotone. He nods at the chip bag. "Kinda hungry." He holds the bag out to her, offering her some. Angela shakes her head and glances around the room for her mother. She spots her in the kitchen holding a baby and stirring a pot on the stove. She knows this is her mother's way of not having to interact with anyone - grab somebody's baby, so you have something to hold onto and make yourself useful. Angela knows by the time they eat, her mother will be acting like she cooked the goddamn curry.

Paul has turned to stare into the kitchen now too. "I think your mother fucking hates me," he says to Angela. She doesn't know what to say to this because it's true. He stands there for another few minutes saying nothing and then turns and walks away.

Angela notices Susan watching her. She downs the last of the drink just to spite her sister and tries not to screw up her face as it burns going down. It would be nice if she came over to say hello, or God forbid, introduce me to some of her friends, Angela thinks, instead of monitoring my drinking.

Returning to the kitchen, she notices the start of a nice buzz and makes a point of introducing herself to the people standing there. She even remembers to say she is "Moon's" sister. Her mother tries to push a plate of food on her, but Angela refuses. Her mother hisses, "You have to eat something," like she used to say to her husband. Angela ignores her, pours more scotch into her glass, and walks back into the living room, finding a spot to sit on the stairs. She has to keep shifting to one side for people going to use the bathroom. She gets up a few more times to refill her drink but no one makes any attempt to talk to her.

For a while she enjoys watching everyone and then something shifts inside her, like someone has pulled a lever, and suddenly she feels stupid and alone on the cold wooden stairs. Everyone else is laughing and sitting close to each other, their hips touching on the couch, warm plates of food in their hands. She drains her drink and gets up to get another one.

Her sister follows her into the kitchen. "What are you doing?" Susan asks, grabbing her arm.

"Hello to you too. And thanks for making Mom and I feel so welcome and introducing us to all your friends." She realizes when parts of it come out in a slur that she's had too much to drink. She fishes her bottle out of the cupboard anyway.

"Look at you. You're drunk. And you're hiding your bottles like Dad did. Holy shit, Angie."

Angela glances around to make sure no one has heard.

"You're not going to wreck this for me. Go fuck yourself," Susan says and then she is gone.

"Okay everyone." Her sister's voice booms from the living room. "It's time to welcome the solstice. Everyone outside!" There is a great rumbling of bodies rising and coat zippers and people talking. Angela leans back against the counter and regrets not having eaten. She walks out into the living room and concentrates on avoiding her mother as she tries to get into her coat and not lose her drink.

On the porch, she almost falls trying to put her boots on and she hears someone laugh. She wonders if they are laughing at her. Holding onto the glass with her bare hand - she seems to have lost her gloves - Angela walks out to where the crowd is gathered. She goes straight to the back and stands behind everyone else. When she looks up, her sister is bending over a pail in the middle of the yard.

Suddenly her sister's face is lit orange by the huge flaming torch she is holding. Angela watches her dip the other end into the pail and then hold a lighter to it. Both ends of the stick are on fire now and her sister starts to twirl it like a baton. She throws it up in the air and even manages to whirl around herself before catching it. The crowd hushes and moans in rhythm with the performance. Fire spinning. Angela remembers her sister talking about it, but she's never seen her do it.

Angela's mother stands in the living room window. She is staring out, still holding onto the baby. Oh, to be that baby, Angela thinks, and again pushes down the urge to cry. She focuses on her sister, watching Susan's breath escaping up into the sky in white gasps. She tries to concentrate on standing still, but finds she can't. Her body sways of its own accord. She watches Susan's arms pump, making the stick dance in circles, making bright orange fire balls that seem to burn holes in the black sky.