Avrom
(When God was Wrong)
by: Rex Maurice Oppenheimer
Avrom squinted into the sun’s rays as he awoke. He turned to Suzanne lying beside him and gently kissed her
shoulder. Smiling in her sleep, she lifted her leg and wrapped it over his.
He touched her, smoothing his hand down her side and along her thigh. Sighing, she nuzzled in, holding him,
warming like a lioness in the sun. Their love and desire shimmering like heat rising on the savannah. When
their skin touched, Avrom knew he was right where he was supposed to be
Suddenly he sat up. “Oh my god, the kids!” Wide-eyed, he stared at the clock, “I forgot the kids were here.”
Avrom and Suzanne had been married a year. The children were from his previous marriage. He had custody of
them two days a week and every other weekend. Suzanne loved them, but getting used to an instant family hadn’t
been easy.
“It’s late,” explained Avrom, as he slid from Suzanne’s arms, “Rachel’s lunch, their breakfast, I’ve got to get them
to school.” Suzanne held on, for a minute, teasing, and yet, a little miffed. She felt cheated. So did he.
Trying to hurry, Avrom pulled on his underwear before wrapping himself in a robe. The underwear beneath the
robe was for modesty’s sake in front of the children. In the past, Avrom would walk around stark naked, but Su-
zanne insisted that he not only wear a robe when the kids were there but underwear, too. She had told him that
to only wear the robe, which would swing open when he moved, was covert abuse.
He’d thought that was bullshit. Psychobabble. When he first met Suzanne, her bookcase contained nothing but
self-help books and myriad volumes on various approaches to spiritual awareness. Avrom detested psychology,
“that’s where all the psychos come from,” he used to say, and before he’d met Suzanne, and before he’d crawled
back into recovery from the substances that were destroying him, reading books about spiritual awareness meant
you didn’t get it.
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