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whatever she liked, but unable to hold on to the question any longer.
    “Not long,” she said.
    “You like it?”
    “Not much, but Dad said with vodka, it’s better to take it neat so you can keep track of how much you’ve had.”
    Now I truly loved my son, but taking advice about alcohol from a man who drank himself to death seems unwise. For most of his twenties, my son thought staying drunk was the way to address the emptiness. When he married Jasmine and they had Zora, I think he hoped family would be the cure. He even joined AA and went to meetings before rehearsals, but he always went back to drinking. After a particularly horrendous weekend, Jasmine went to the bank, withdrew her half of their savings, packed up her daughter, and left. She drove to Florida and invested her money in a tiny beachfront motel, where they rang a bell every night at sunset to honor the end of another day and tended to attract a laid-back clientele of regulars who didn’t require pampering. Zora grew up there, raised by a mother who adored her and a father who visited occasionally.
    When he got so sick he couldn’t work, he came to the front door of the motel one evening, like he was just another traveler looking for a few nights’ rest, and never left. When he died, Jasmine and Zora invited me to come for the service and I did. We rang the bell at sunset and scattered his ashes in the ocean behind the motel. I wept a little for the distance I had allowed my work to create between my son and me. I couldn’t deny that I had chosen to live my life without making any real space for him in it. There were reasons then, and there are reasons now, but the end result was he left his daughter behind with Jasmine, the same way I had left him in his father’s care, without a backward glance.
    She deserved better, I thought that day, watching Zora standing beside her mother in a long white dress, eulogizing her father as if he couldn’t have been more perfect if he tried. The next morning, I invited Zora and Jasmine to come to Amsterdam for the New Year’s Eve celebration that would usher in the new millennium. That way, I explained, if the doomsayers were right, at least we’d be together at the end. Jasmine said that was a pretty depressing reason to fly thousands of miles across the ocean, and how about if they came because there was no place else they’d rather be? They stayed a month and the three of us got closer than we’d ever been.
    Maybe that was why the way Zora was looking so hard for MacArthur to refill her drink order made me feel so sad and so scared that I opened my mouth to tell her that whatever she was looking for probably wasn’t hanging around in the bottom of a cocktail glass, but I hadn’t seen her in so long. It would probably be better to head home and get settled in before I started dispensing unsolicited advice.
    “Well,” I said, “you’re grown. You can drink whatever you want, but can we do it at your place? I’ve had all the pie I can afford to eat, but if we sit here much longer, I’ll have to polish off the rest.”
    I spoke quickly because MacArthur was headed toward us and Zora was already wiggling her glass in his direction. My request took her by surprise.
    “What?” She looked at my half-eaten pie and back to me.
    “You ready to show me your house?” I said, reaching for my credit card as MacArthur waited patiently for instructions.
    “Oh, yes! I’m sorry. Of course we can go. Sure, sure…”
    MacArthur left us to run the card; Zora tipped her glass back one more time to sip the watery remains of her drink and stood up.
    “Is this all you brought?” she said, glancing at my small pile of luggage.
    “Travelin’ light,” I said. “Just like always.” She slung my carry-on over her shoulder and tucked the garment bag over the pulling suitcase’s extended handle like a pro. I taught her well.
    I signed the check and included a generous tip. MacArthur repaid my largesse by holding my