Tuesday, January 24, 2006

Cheese Man - Part 3

I did not look pretty when I stood in front of Judge Rostenberg for my arraignment. It had been ten days since my last shower, and everyone in the courtroom could sense my presence.

Case #264399, the State of Michigan against Lisa Berger. “Ms. Berger, you have been charged with first degree murder in the death of your husband. How do you plead?”

“Not guilty, your honor.”

“Mr. Prosecutor,” the judge asked, do you have any bail recommendation?

“We request that the state hold Ms. Berger without bail. Her crime was both heinous and deadly. She killed her husband with a Q-Tip because she didn’t like cheese. We have no idea how dangerous this woman could become if she was set free, and ran into someone who served her decaf when she ordered regular.”

“OK then. Ms. Berger, you are hereby sentenced to remain in the custody of the state until the trial. Your heinous and deadly crime with an ordinary household object will not go unpunished in my courtroom.”

“Bailiff, warn the prison staff that she is coming today. I understand they are serving grilled cheese in the prison cafeteria.”

-------

“Ummmm, ohh, Jack, don’t stop. Oh yes. Yes. Oh Jack, oh my god, ummmm, oh Ja – OUCH. YOU BIT ME”

Jack opened his mouth, and stepped away from Sandy’s ear. The small TV in the office was reporting live from the Oakland County Court House that Lisa Berger had been held without bail, for killing her husband with a Q-Tip.

“Did you see that,” Jack asked his secretary. “She killed him with a Q-tip.”

“You almost bit my ear off,” Sandy screamed back.

But Jack continued, not even hearing her. “She went after him in the most vulnerable of places, his ear.”

“It’s bleeding. Are you happy, you broke through the skin.”

“What kind of animal can do that to someone,” Jack asked to no one in particular.

“Are you listening to me, Jack Kay. There are going to be teeth marks on my ear. What am I supposed to tell my boyfriend when he sees that?”

“Call the Oakland County Prosecutor’s office. Tell them Jack Kay wants to come in and put the Ear Whacker in jail for the rest of her life.”

Jack looked over at Sandy. “Did you know your ear was bleeding? You might want to take care of that.

-----

Sandy had easily gotten through to the prosecutor’s office. So far, there had been offers to help in the prosecution from three cheese advocates and one men’s right groups, but Jack was the first ear aficionado to call.

“It’s all so vulnerable. Just tissue and interesting structure, and this woman, this monster, just tore through all that and killed him. I want to be part of the team, Jose. When I went into law, it was to put these monsters away.”

Jack finished his pitch, and waited for the head Oakland County prosecutor, Jose Gomez, to answer.

Jose cleared his throat, and laughed. “I’m sure we can have a place for you on our team, Jack. Welcome aboard.”

An hour later Jose broke out in hysterical laughter.

“Sharon, you gotta see what Jack just sent over.”

Sitting on his desk was a mountain of cheese, with a package of pigs ears on top.

--------

I sat with my court-appointed attorney, Steve Brown. Steve was the only attorney from the pool willing to defend me, and I could tell right away that he had some reservations.

“Are you sure you don’t want to plead guilty, and spare the nation this trial,” he asked.

“I am not guilty. I am being singled out for my dislike of cheese. You have to help me beat this. I can’t spend the rest of my life in prison.”

Steve thought about it, but he had no choice. He was my attorney. Come hell or high water, he was going to stand next to me at trial.

“OK,” he finally said. “Let’s work on our strategery. We are going to need to win over public opinion.” Steve had a big grin on his face.

"Now go take a shower."

-----

With the apartment next door empty, Carol and Yitzi resumed their evening activities.

The preceding story is fiction. Any similarity between characters mentioned, their names, their attributes, or anything about them is merely coincidental.

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Thursday, January 19, 2006

Cheese Man Part 2

The funeral was the next day. Everybody was there. Michael and I had been one of those fabulous couples that get involved in everything, so the whole world made time for the funeral. Even the old, crotchety guy from shul who always complained that young people were taking over the shul showed up to pay his respects to the 'young punk.'

The Rabbi spoke beautifully, talking about how when a couple is ripped apart by something so tragic, it is like a bagel being destroyed, and the only way to soothe the pain, he said, for me, for Michael’s family, for the entire community, was with cream cheese. A few people laughed out loud, and the old crotchety guy shook his head and muttered something about the young punk rabbi, but most people were able to maintain the proper funeral decorum.

It wasn’t until Michael was being lowered into the ground that all hell started to break loose. First, the casket fell slipped off one of the ropes that was holding it up above the hole, before they lowered it in. The people tried to lift the casket up and straighten in out, but it was too heavy, and the rabbi decided they should lower the foot end of the casket into the ground, so Michael could find peace and not be crunched up head first inside the casket.

But that was nothing compared to what happened next. Town yentas live their entire lives waiting for a moment like this, and today was their day. As the bottom half of the casket was being lowered into the ground, Michael’s mother walked over to me.

“Mom, I’m so sorry,” I started.

The tears that had filled her eyes during the service were replaced with rage. “You killed my boy,” she yelled. “You knew he was standing there, and you did it on purpose. I never liked you anyway. You little slut. You stole my little Mikey, and then you killed him.”

She would have continued to yell and scream, but one of her sons grabbed her by the arm and led her away, back to the car. As she was led away, all she kept yelling was “You little slut, you killed my boy.”

Carol came over and held my hand. “Are you ok,” she asked.

“I’m just glad I’m not related to her anymore,” I said.

Shiva was a disaster. When we got back to my apartment, friends had come and set up the house. Mirrors were covered, there were those small chairs for me to sit on, and four people had dropped off huge cheese platters.

Really, hadn’t I suffered enough?

Carol was with me. Come to think of it, she had barely left my side since the incident the night before. “When this shiva is over,” I whispered to her, “I am going to get rid of all the cheese in this house. I am going to have a huge cheese tossing party, and get rid of every single stinking piece of cheese in this house. I don’t ever want to see another piece of cheese again. Not cheddar, mozzarella, muenster, brie, or any of the other crappy cheese flavors that have filled my fridge the past six months.”

The doorbell rang; it was a delivery boy. "Cheese delivery," the boy said, handing the tray to Carol before I could shoo him away.

I was OK for the first few days of Shiva, but by the third or fourth day, I was ready for a shower. I hadn’t planned on Mike dying, and I hadn’t showered since the morning before he died. It had been a week since my last shower, and I was feeling really disgusting. I still had two days to go, and I didn’t know if I was going to make it.

“Carol,” I said. “If anyone ever asks you, tell them to take a shower before they kill their husband.”

Carol gave a nervous laugh. “You know,” she said, “the police officers that were here the night Michael died came over to talk with me last night.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I guess they are just trying to see if you killed him on purpose.”

“You told them I would never kill him, didn’t you?”

“Of course I told him that, but I just wanted you to know they are asking questions, so you might want to tone down the ‘I just killed my husband’ talk.”

“Can I talk to you about something personal,” I asked her, changing the subject.

“Sure, go ahead.”

“This is kind of awkward, but do you think you and Yitzi could go one night without, you know, umm, doing it?”

Carol started to turn red.

“Carol, I love listening to you guys most of the time, but with Michael being dead, and me sleeping alone, I was just hoping you guys could, ya know, take a night off, out of respect for the grieving.”

Carol stood up, and walked out the door.

----

Shiva was almost over. It was Wednesday afternoon, and I all could think about was taking a shower and cleaning my apartment, when there was a knock on the door. My mother was over, and opened the door. There were two police officers at the door, the same ones who had come by the night Michael died.

“Is Lisa here,” one of them asked. “She’s inside,” I heard my mother answer.

“Can we come in,” the officer asked. “We’d like to talk to her about a few things.”

“I don’t think now is a good time,” my mother answered. “She is getting up from Shiva, you know mourning, this evening, and I think needs some quiet time.”

“Ma’am, we could come back with a warrant, or we can just talk to her now,” the officer said.

My mother started to answer, but I interrupted. “Let them come in, Ma,” I shouted.

The two officers walked into the living room. I was still sitting in the low chair, and they sat on the couch across from me.

“We’re sorry for your loss, Mrs. Berger,” one of the officers said. “We just want to talk to you a bit, for the file.”

My mother sat down on the floor next to me, and I instinctively grabbed her hand.

“I’m Detective Lawrence Gil, and this is my partner, Detective Eizen.”

I nodded at both of them. They returned my nod, so I nodded again. Again, they returned my nod. I thought about nodding one more time, but let it go. Detective Gil started to talk.

“I understand you and Michael had a fight the day he died. Is that true?”

I shrugged. “I guess so. We used to fight a lot. He was always trying to serve cheese all the time.”

“So you did fight on the day that he died.” He paused, wrote something on his notepad, and then continued. “Can you tell me about the events that happened the night that Michael died?”

“What events?”

“The timeline. What you were doing leading up to the Q-Tip.”

“We ate dinner, watched some TV, and went to bed. He was in the bathroom getting ready to go to sleep, and that’s when it happened.”

“When what happened?”

“When I opened the door to the bathroom. That’s what killed him, I guess. I opened the door, it bumped into his arm, and the force of the door pushed the Q-Tip into his brain.”

“What did you do after he fell?”

“What do you mean, after he fell?”

“Did you call an ambulance?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I checked his pulse. He was dead. I called my rabbi because I didn’t know what to do.”

“Our witness says she thinks she heard something large fall down at 10:15. She knows it was exactly 10:15 because she was watching TV and ran into the bathroom at the commercial. She says it had to be really big because you play your music very loudly. She also says that you like to get involved in other people's business for no reason at all. Phone records show that you didn’t make a call for almost 20 minutes, until 10:33. What happened during those twenty minutes?”

“Umm, I don’t remember.”

“The Q-Tip was pushed pretty far into your husband’s brain. Are you sure he didn’t fall down, and then you pushed the Q-Tip deeper into his head, ultimately killing him.”

“You’re crazy. I didn’t intentionally kill my husband. I went into the bathroom to get a hair removal kit. I checked his pulse. He was dead, so I got the hair removal kit out, used it, and called my rabbi. Are you happy now? I have a hairy upper lip, and didn't want that to go in the file. But now there it is for everyone to see.”

He ignored my ranting, wrote something else in his notebook, and continued.

“Let me get this straight. You fought with your husband. He was dead on the floor, and the first thing you could think of was to take care of some unwanted hair?”

“Yes. That’s exactly what happened.”

“But you just said you didn’t remember what happened.”

“Stop trying to confuse me. Please leave. This conversation is over.” I squeezed my mother’s hand tightly. She hadn’t said a word at all to the detectives, and I was wondering what she thought of me now.

Detective Gil looked over at Detective Eizen.

They both stood up. “Detective Eizen spoke for the first time. “Please stand up ma’am,” he said.

He was tall and imposing, and I listened. “Lisa Berger, you are under arrest for the murder of Michael Berger.” In one motion, my hands were handcuffed behind my back. “Anything you say can and will be held against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney.”

I looked over at my mother, and watched as she collapsed on the floor.

The preceding story is Fiction.

Part One

Part Three

Cheese Man - Part I

“I was thinking we would have some fried mozzarella sticks, French onion soup and some kind of pasta, maybe fettuccini with melted cheese on top,” Michael told me.

“Every day, its cheese for every meal. I swear, Michael, I can’t take it any more. I need something real,” I said back.

“Lisa, baby, cheese is real food.”

“No it’s not. I’m sick of it.” I was shouting now. “Why can’t you be a real man? Why won’t you be like all the other guys, and make steak, or hot dogs, or burgers? Cheese, cheese, cheese. I can’t stand it anymore.”

“You can never go wrong with cheese.” He was yelling back now. Cheese is the most delicious food on the whole damn planet. It’s creamy, and smooth, and I love it. And I won’t stop eating it. Not for you, not for my doctor, not for anyone.”

Michael walked out of the bedroom, and I followed him. “For Christ sake, you have a dairy grill. You wear boxers with little squares of cheese and mice on them. It’s really sick. Don’t you ever want to just scream enough cheese? We’ve been married for six months, and I haven’t seen you eat a single piece of meat in all that time. What is with your obsession with cheese?”

Michael ignored me and sat on the couch. He turned on the TV. Cheese Freaks was on the Food Network, and he could not be disturbed while he was watching his show.

I walked out onto the balcony. Our neighbors were sitting on their balcony, on the sixth floor of our apartment building.

“I wish, for one night, Yitzi would let me cook some lasagna or baked Ziti,” Carol said to me. “Maybe we should swap husbands for dinner some time.”

I laughed. “You heard us?”

“Every word, Lisa. You know these walls are paper thin.”

I did know that. I knew that Yitzi and Carol, our newlywed next door neighbors, were trying to set some kind of newlywed lovemaking record. I knew Yitzi was a real man, tough and demanding and always eating meat. And I knew that there was something seriously wrong with Michael and his cheese obsession.

“That’s the third time this week I’ve heard you fighting over cheese,” Carol commented. “You guys might want to get into some kind of counseling for that.”

“I can just imagine that,” I told her. “Counselor, my husband is obsessed with cheese, and I can’t stand it. I think I would score at the very bottom of the complaint list. Oh god, sometimes I just wish he was dead.”

I walked back inside. Chef Marty was showing how to create a cheese diorama using cheddar and Muenster cheese.

I walked into our bedroom, turned on a baseball game, and watched the players beat each other up.

“You should be watching sports, like a real man,” I shouted into the next room.

“Screw you, Lisa,” he shouted back.

We didn’t talk during dinner. We sat on opposite ends of the table. He munched joyfully on his fried mozzarella sticks and fettuccini, while I ate carryout from the Chinese place around the corner. We did not talk at all during dinner.

We watched TV in silence, fortunate that we both liked the Thursday night television lineup. At least we wouldn’t be fighting over the TV.

The show ended, and Michael went into the bathroom that was connected to our bedroom. I wanted to use the second bathroom that was in the hallway of our two bedroom apartment, but I needed to get my Sally Hansen Spa Wax Hair Removal Kit. A quick glance in the mirror reminded me that I needed to take care of the hair growing above my upper lip.

The Shower CD that we had gotten from friends was blasting in the bathroom, and I’m sure Michael didn’t hear me coming. I heard him singing along with the CD, ‘N Sync, I think, and I rolled my eyes. I pushed the door open quickly.

I had no idea that Michael would be cleaning out his ears with a Q-Tip at that moment. I had no idea that he would be standing next to the door, his elbow out, digging furiously to try to clean out some hard to reach ear wax.

I also had no idea that when I pushed open the door, it would push his elbow toward him, pushing his hand toward his head, and forcing the Q-Tip through his ear, and into the brain.

I had no idea that the force of the Q-Tip going through his ear and into his brain would kill him before he hit the floor.

He didn’t even make a sound. I needed all my strength to force the door open, which was being held by his now dead body.

I forced my way into the small bathroom, his crumpled body now flopped over on the floor, and checked his pulse. There was nothing. Michael was dead, in a bizarre Q-Tip accident, and there was nothing I could do to bring him back. I reached under the sink, and took out my Sally Hansen Spa Wax Hair Removal Kit, and applied it to my upper lip. I watched TV for fifteen minutes until Sally Hansen had finished her important work, rinsed my face, and felt my smooth upper lip with my tongue. I was guaranteed to be hair free for the next eight weeks.

What do you do when you accidentally kill your husband, I wondered. And how long does it take before I get my life insurance check?

I didn’t know if I should call the police, the ambulance, or my rabbi. I didn’t want to get police involved, there was no crime here. It was too late for an ambulance. So I called my rabbi. He showed up twenty minutes later with two police officers who were just going to look around for a few minutes.

The preceding story is fiction. Any similarity between the characters to people in real life is merely coincidental.

Part Two