One of the first things my grandmother taught me to do was to separate egg yolks. When I was tragically young, she and I used to pick sour cherries off the tree in the back and bake pies together. She's a talented baker: a true artist, a professional. There are pictures of us: her beautiful, made-up, Jackie O babysitting effortlessly in high heels and me, the messy, artless little blonde child, three or four years old. I still remember watching her manicured fingernails as she broke the eggs and cradled the orange globes between the two halves of the shell, egg white sliding cleanly away.
Now I'm making lemon curd in my kitchen, which smells like lemon and magnolia blossoms. Artless as ever. The moon is a sliver in the clean indigo after-sunset sky, a perfect mirror of the one I had tattooed on my back that particular day in January, although then it was going and now it's coming on, waxing.
I feel achingly sad and foolish.
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