Troy Stand

In 2008, my parents rented a villa from our good friend's aunt in Italy for a vacation. It was nice. There were a lot of nice things in it that my father wanted.

Last summer, in 2009, this friend was coming over to our house and when my father heard this, he moved faster than any human ever had toward a marionette-style painted horse that was hanging from the ceiling. He hid the horse. As the air around me settled, I put two and two together. Ah. Stolen horse. So, the horse has resided in quiet corners of his bedroom since then.

Tonight, I was sitting in there with my mother and noticed the horse, looking bedraggled, was next to his bed. It looked a little stiff. Not quite as jangly as a marionette ought. I bent down to look more closely.

"Oh, your father's been working on that," my mother said casually.

"Is it broken?" I asked.

"No. He wants it to stand up," she said.

"Uh, it's a marionette," I said. The horse has two joints in each leg, one in its tail, and one in the neck.

"He's been gluing it," she said. "So it will stand up."

"You're telling me he's been ... spending time trying to glue the horse's joints so that it ... "

I stopped and thought for a few seconds.

"You know, I wish I didn't know that, Mom."