Vodka

I
A lazy summer’s eve.
My wife and I decide to break
a mostly teetotalling habit and
have a drink to keep the lurking
humidity at bay. I decide to mix
cold orange juice with vodka from
a dusty, half-empty bottle that has
languished in exile, hidden in a desolate cupboard,
undisturbed, for longer than I can remember.
Drinks poured. Glasses served. We take a first sip.
Cold. Very nice; though I sense
something lacking. “Don’t you
find it a bit weak?” I say.
My wife shrugs her shoulders
as any novice imbiber would.
I pick up the vodka bottle and sniff,
then run my finger round the bottleneck
rim and place it to my lips.
“Water!” I declare, a detective
surmising treachery afoot.
Simultaneously, the image of our teenage
son enters our thoughts with the certainty that,
through raging adolescent curiosity, he
has surreptitiously turned vodka into water.

II
When I confront him with a stern, fatherly,
“Did you drink the vodka from the bottle
and replace it with water?”
Expecting him to return a glorious tap dance
of a lie, he rather nonchalantly replies,
“Yeah, four years ago.” And then he stares, bemused
at the twitch that immediately overtakes my left eye.