Things really started to get weird when Mary bought the dress for the monkey.  Not that they weren’t weird before.  But when she turned up on Thursday afternoon with a pink, lacy, sparkly party-dress just the right size and shape for a small monkey, the weirdness rose to a new level.  Crazy-weird.

“Isn’t Frederick a boy monkey?”  I asked.

“That doesn’t matter,” Mary replied, in a matter-of-fact tone.  “I think it’s a beautiful dress.”

“Whatever,” I mumbled in response.  As far as I was concerned, she could do whatever she wanted with that stupid monkey.  Oh, you might think it would be kind of cool to have a real-live pet monkey living in your house -- and Mary certainly thought so -- but I just thought it was annoying.  He couldn’t purr like a pet cat.  He couldn’t (or wouldn’t) play fetch like a pet dog.  He couldn’t talk like a parrot.  He would just make messes in my room that I had to clean up.  He would steal my raisins when I wasn’t looking.  And he would only do his tricks for Mary; her shoulder was the only one he would sit on.  Monkeys can be very particular in that way.  They’ve got a lot of personality -- and not always a charming one.  Sometimes, the idea of having something, like a pet monkey, is better than actually having it.  You know what I mean?

So anyway -- I feel kind of guilty in saying this -- but I was actually kind of glad when I heard a couple of weeks ago that Frederick the Monkey was sick and dying.  I can’t remember what it was -- some bizarre monkey disease -- but he was going downhill fast.  Mary, of course, cried a lot when she first found out.  But I was secretly satisfied (though I tried to pretend like I was just shocked).  Don’t get me wrong.  I wasn’t mean-spirited.  There was a part of me that was genuinely sad -- but there was another part of me that was relieved and looking forward to a simpler life without a bad-tempered monkey banging around our family room.  Still, as time went on and Frederick became more sick, my feelings followed.  I felt bad for him.  I felt bad for Mary.

But what was strange was the way that Mary seemed to become happier as the day of Frederick’s death drew nearer.  Instead of drawing and coloring pictures of Frederick -- which had been one of her favorite hobbies -- she started drawing pictures of little girls with blonde curls, drinking tea, wearing party dresses.  Instead of playing nursemaid to Frederick as the little guy grew tireder and sicker, she started cleaning the house of all its pet monkey toys and trinkets, humming a happy tune to herself as she worked.  And when she came home that Thursday afternoon with the tiny prom dress, she merely swept over Frederick’s bed long enough to size up the dress to his shriveled form, as if to make sure that it was the right size, and then she went to her room to clean some more.  I just figured that each person -- even incomprehensible little Mary -- had their ways for dealing with these things.

Oddly enough, I was the only one who was there for Frederick’s last breath.  It was on that Friday, the day after the party dress.  Mary was playing in her room.  I don’t know where everyone else was.  But I was reading my book in the family room when I saw Frederick’s tiny paw jerk upward, as if he knew the answer to a classroom question.  I went over to his little bed in the corner of the room, to see what was happening, and the monkey’s tiny face was more shriveled and snarled than usual.  He looked uncomfortable.  But when he saw me, his features seemed to relax a little bit.  His eyes got kind of milky and his breathing became shallow.  And then the breathing just stopped.  It was sadder than I thought it would be.

The first door I knocked on was, of course, Mary’s.  “Hey Mary.  I think Frederick just died…”  I paused to catch my breath and brace myself for her reaction.  “I’m sorry.”

“Oh…” she trailed off, like she was only half-listening.  “OK.  Thanks.  I’ll take care of it.”

“What do you mean, you’ll ‘take care of it?’”  I was surprised by her cool, casual demeanor.

“I’ll bury him in the backyard or something.”

“’Or something?’  What does that mean?” I asked.  “Are you OK?  Your monkey just died, you know.”

“I know,” said Mary, kind of distant.  I was still expecting her to burst out in tears at any moment.  But the crying never came.  She came out to the family room, all right, and she scooped Frederick up in her arms and carried him back to her room, as if it were some kind of pink funeral home.  But there wasn’t much more to it than that.

“Do you think we should have a funeral service or a memorial service or something like that for him, Mary?” I asked after her, trying to be helpful.  But the only answer was a gentle clicking of the latch on her door as it closed behind her and the lifeless monkey.

Hours later I was horrified to see Mary playing in the family room with a small, heavy, doll-like figure wearing a pink party dress.  A closer look confirmed my worst suspicions:  It was Frederick.  But Mary was casual, even peaceful -- not at all deranged.  “How do you like my new baby-girl?” she asked.  “Her name is Wilhelmina.”

“What?!?!”  I exclaimed.  “Mary, that’s gross!  That’s not a baby-girl.  That’s Frederick!”

“No, it’s not,” replied Mary.  “It’s Wilhelmina.”

“Yes it is,” I countered.  “It’s Frederick.  But he’s dead, Mary.  You can’t play with a dead monkey.  You might get sick!”

“I won’t get sick,” said Mary.  “Me and Wilhelmina are just fine.”  And she just kept on playing.  A perfect little tea set was laid out in front of them.  Cream-colored ceramics, with pink roses painted on the sides.

I was freaking out.  I tried convincing Mary of the truth -- that her monkey was dead -- but she would hear nothing of it.  So in the end, I gave up trying.  The rest of the evening, Mary and her “baby-girl” enjoyed the time of their lives, playing marbles, reading storybooks, pretending to have high tea with the Queen of England.

By the end of that weekend, of course, the act was no longer just psychologically disturbing, but physically uncomfortable as well.  The smell of decay was wafting through the house.  The monkey’s fur was looking greasy and unkempt.  I started to worry about Frederick/Wilhelmina’s arm falling off, in the middle of a game of ring-around-the-rosy, maggots spilling out onto the carpet like some kind of horror movie.  I had to get out of the house.

On the street corner, I told my friend Malcom about everything that had happened, and he suggested that we had to just take the monkey corpse sometime, when Mary wasn’t looking, and bury him in an unmarked grave out in the woods.  I contemplated the possibilities for a moment, and as far as I could figure, it seemed like Malcom was right.  It was the only way.

So when Mary went through the motions of putting Wilhelmina to bed that night, just after brushing her own teeth and just before going to bed according to the usual routine, I humored her more than I normally would have.

“Say good-night to Wilhelmina,” Mary instructed.

“Good night, Wilhelmina,” I responded dutifully.

“Do you want to give her a good-night kiss?” asked Mary, seemingly stirred by my good-natured night-time farewells.

“No thanks,” I said.

Mary leaned over the ugly monkey corpse and delivered a gentle kiss on the nose.  “Good-night, Wilhelmina,” she said.  She carefully tucked in the blanket -- the green one with the embroidered flowers on it -- around the monkey’s tiny frame, and her fingers trailed off like silk strings carried off to her bedroom.  I kind of wonder if Mary secretly knew that it was the end.

After I was pretty sure that Mary had fallen asleep, I beeped Malcom on my old walkie-talkie -- our pre-arranged signal for “Operation Monkey Drop.”  And when Malcom appeared at the window, we jumped quickly into action.  Through the window, I handed Malcom the Nike shoebox, the best casket we could arrange, containing the unceremoniously folded remains of Frederick.  Then I slipped casually out the back door, and we ran to the woods:  Malcom carrying the flashlight and the shovel, and me carrying the shoebox.  Out in the woods, we were a bit nervous because of the whole scenario -- you know, moonlight, grave-digging, shadowy trees, strange sounds -- so it did not take us long to agree on a spot for Frederick’s final resting place.  We took turns with one holding the flashlight while the other pulled up chunks of brown, chalky earth with the spade-shovel.  And finally -- probably at a more shallow depth than what would normally be considered appropriate -- we said good enough.  I grabbed the shoebox with clumsy hands and told Malcom to steady the flashlight for a moment.

With a sense of ceremony and significance, I opened up the box and felt it necessary to rearrange the body before burial.  I bent the knees and hips and curled the long tail so that Frederick could lie fully on his back.  He was wearing the pink party dress, but I figured there wasn’t much to be done about that at this point.  I tugged on the hem of the dress so that it draped elegantly over his lower half.  The top half of the dress needed to be rotated about five degrees to my left, his right, and -- there -- he looked rested.  Ready.  And just as we had gotten started, the funeral was finished.  The covert operation was completed.  I thanked Malcom for his help and for the use of his Dad’s shovel.  He said no problem and melted off into the night.

As I re-entered the house, I was freshly confronted with the not-so-fresh smell of decomposition.  Sweet and sickening, the monkey’s presence had not yet been wiped out.  I found an old fondue burner in the kitchen drawer and set it up in the corner where the monkey’s bed had been.  I struck a match, and already I could feel the stink of death disappearing.  It was slow and solemn, like a cathedral.  Somehow I felt a presence in the room behind me, and I was not surprised when I heard Mary ask:  “She’s gone, isn’t she?”

“Yes.  He’s gone,” I said.  “I’m sorry.”

“Me too,” was Mary’s only response.  “Me too.”