Chapter 23: The Moon

My mother's recipe lived in a blue tin on the top shelf.

I took it down on Sunday morning for the first time in two years.

The card was soft with butter stains.

Her handwriting ran across it in blue ink: Moon cake. Two sticks of butter, room temperature. Don't rush it.

"What's moon cake?" Otto asked.

He stood on a kitchen chair at my elbow in an apron that came to his shins.

"It's a yellow cake with a sugar crescent on top," I said.

"My mother made it for every birthday I ever had."

"Is it a banana?"

"It's a moon."

"It looks like a banana on the card."

"Then it's a banana moon," Cavan said from the table, where he was supposed to be reading the paper.

Otto pointed a spoon at him.

"You're not allowed to talk. You're the uncle."

"What does the uncle do?"

"The uncle eats."

"Fair."

I measured flour, and Otto cracked the eggs, and only a small piece of shell went in.

He fished it out with a finger and examined it with enormous seriousness.

"This is a shell," he said.

"I see that."

"I'm taking it out so nobody breaks their teeth."

"Thank you for your service."

We beat the butter until it went pale.

He asked me why my mother wasn't here to make it.

I said she had died when I was twenty-four.

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