Mr. Montgomery, The Monkey.

Everything my mother had ever owned was packed neatly into twenty-seven cardboard boxes with room to spare. I was numb to noise, conversation and all of the movement around me, because I was transfixed with the twenty-seven little brown boxes that were being removed from her apartment, one by one. As my husband, my teary-eyed Aunt Helen, and her three-legged dog made their way from hallway to car - the dog more front door to the pavement, given its mobility - I remained lifeless on the couch.

I woke from my trance to John gently shaking my shoulders “That’s the last of them, Elle -” he paused like he was going to say something else, but then thought the better of it, leaving my name floating in the empty room, bouncing off the white walls like the DVD loading screen in the late 90’s.

“Okay,” I whispered. 

Helen came through the front door brushing hair out of her eyes, taking in the house with linger for a goodbye. She took a deep breath. “Time to go, pet,” she said. 

“Can I have a minute?” My throat felt dry and the words barely came out. 

Helen pressed her lips tightly together and nodded her head towards the door. “John, will you help me get Daisy into the car?”

“Yeah, Helen, ‘course.” He squeezed my hand. When he let go, I let it fall to my thigh. When they closed the door, I felt as if I was hearing silence for the first time. I listened. I waited. Nothing.

“Mom?”

Nothing. 

I willed myself to stand, a hard ask given how weak I had become in the weeks after she left me. I dragged my feet behind me, shuffling into the kitchen. It no longer felt like hers, wiped clean of all the life she had breathed into it.

“Mom?”

Nothing.

This routine continued for the remaining three rooms; bedroom, bathroom, and living room, and each time I was faced with the same echoing silence.

“Bye Mom,” I said as I closed the front door behind me.

John had stacked all the boxes in our hallway. They sat there for two weeks before I could go through them. I didn’t encounter them much, I’d only had to pass them once on the way to the funeral, but aside from that, I hadn’t left the house. My grievance leave had long passed and I didn’t have much more annual leave left to take off work. A part of me wanted to go back to my cubicle, but that would require me passing by the twenty-seven of them.

On one Tuesday afternoon, I decided that it would be the day. I stood barefoot, still in my pajamas in the hallway, reaching to take one down. I peeled off the tape awkwardly and was hit, no, smacked with the scent of lavender laundry pods. She never grew to smell like an old person. I reached in and grasped a floral blouse. I buried my face in it and inhaled. I was crying. I didn’t think I could do it until I heard the jingle. I shot up, eyes wide. It was silent. I sat on my knees, holding the blouse for two whole minutes before I allowed myself to put it down. When I did, I heard it again, the unmistakable sound of a bell. It was muffled and dull, but it was a bell. I ripped open six boxes before I found it, clasped in the hand of Mr. Montgomery, my childhood monkey plushie. I hesitated. He looked up at me, lying on a bed of woolen jumpers.

“Mom?”

I waited a minute, and again, nothing. I picked Mr. Montgomery up with a cautious hand and shook him. His bell rang out with the same sound I had heard before, this time, a hell of a lot clearer. I found myself smiling, the first bit of happiness I had felt in weeks. She bought him for me on my first trip to Dublin Zoo, ‘a silly little monkey for my silly little monkey’, she said, laughing and poking the tip of my nose. Her eyes were as dark as Mr. Montgomery’s, mine, darker still. Once, during a very intense day at the beach, his eye popped off, and I cried the whole car ride home. I’d ruined him. She took him with the gentleness of a nurse and sewed it back on as if it had never happened. I turned the monkey in my hands and poked at its glass eye, it didn’t budge, not even a little bit. I sat him beside me and sorted through the other boxes. 

When John came home from work he poked his head through the doorframe, the stacks having become a routine obstacle in his path. 

“Elle? Babe? Where are the boxes?”

“I cleared them up.”

He kissed my forehead. “That’s a relief,” he looked into my eyes, “for a second I thought we’d been robbed.”

“Ha-ha.”

Finally, noticing my childhood pal, he plucked Mr. Montgomery from my hands. “And who is this?” he waved him in the air. I paused. The bell didn’t ring. 

“John!” I grabbed him back and shook him to no avail. “Did anything fall just now?” I fell to my hands and knees.

“What is it? What are you looking for?”

“The inside of the bell, it must have fallen,” I said, turning, I’ll admit, an unreasonable level of frantic.

“Elle, Elle calm down, it's long gone, it might be in the apartment but it's not here.”

I looked at him blankly. He became sheepish, “I may have shaken him when we were packing, but he didn’t make any noise, I swear.”

“Oh,” I said.

John took Mr. Montgomery from my hands again and sat him on a table. “I can replace the bell if you want?”

“No, it’s okay…" I smiled again. "Let’s go out, properly. I’m in the mood for Chinese.”

“You are?”

“I am.”

I put on my shoes while John started the car. I looked at my monkey on the hall table before I closed the door. “Bye Mom,” I said.

As I closed the door, I heard the bell jingle, and it was the last time I would ever hear it ring.