Skin Like Dawn (When You Come to Me) Read online

  “Your daughter would be correct…”

  “How old are you now, Boy?”

  “A very healthy twenty-eight…”

  “And my dear Natalie is only twenty-four…”

  “Helen, is this your way of wishing me a ‘Happy Birthday’…?”

  “Well, if you’d give me a chance I would,” she replied. “Happy Birthday, Brandon Greene…”

  “I thank you kindly, Helen…”

  “Did Nattie bake you that chocolate cake like I told her to?”

  “Yes, she did,” he replied. “And it was delicious…”

  Her mother loved him – this had become apparent to him. Through the thick, arbitrary levels of her bitter derision laid a softer woman, much like Natalie, who, at all costs, resisted every attempt at exhibiting affection toward men.

  Brandon, through his thin veil of frustration, understood, and dealt with it the best he could.

  “Good, good,” she replied. After a short pause of reflection, she continued with, “she told me you liked chocolate…cake…”

  “Yes, I do,” he answered. He glanced out the bay window and saw Natalie laughing at one of Scotty’s jokes, heaving over Asha’s shoulder when the hilarity became too much.

  “Tallie knows me well.”

  “She better,” the mother snorted. “You’re the only thing she talks about lately…”

  “Hmph.”

  “Now, for the real reason I’m calling…”

  “I’m all ears, Helen.”

  “Is Natalie near you?”

  “Nope,” he replied. “She’s outside enjoying my birthday for me.”

  “Very well, I’ll make it quick…”

  Brandon braced himself for the impending foolish statement that would follow. In spite of her well-hidden love for him, Helen Chandler’s snarky remarks still stung a little from time to time.

  “We wanted to come up for a day or so and surprise her for her birthday…”

  “The ‘we’ being…?”

  “Me, my mama, and my other two daughters…don’t ask me questions, Boy, let me finish…”

  “Fine.”

  “Thank you,” she huffed. “Now, will we have to get a hotel room or can you accommodate us...?”

  “We have the room,” he replied. “Me and Tallie can sleep on the convertible sofa in the living room…”

  “So you’re saying that you want your pregnant wife to sleep on a cot in that cold ass living room, child?”

  Brandon attempted to stifle his heavy sigh. “No…I’ll sleep on the cot in our cold ass living room…”

  “Watch your mouth, Boy,” she replied. “Very well…we can arrange that…”

  “I await your arrival, Helen,” he said. “Is there anything I need to do to prepare?”

  “Yes,” she began. “Just have the right attitude when I get there…that’s all you need to do…”

  DAMN IT. Now that would be a tough one. But he had a little while to prepare for it. A month and a half of undisturbed married time with his wife was all he needed. Besides, he was getting quite good at handling Helen. He knew her angle very well.

  Tallie could smell the agitation on him as soon as he came to bed that night.

  “Brandy,” she sang in her sweet southern voice. He groaned a little and shuffled out of his t-shirt before plopping down beside her.

  “Yes, baby…”

  He knew a series of questions would come next, and he wasn’t sure how to answer them.

  “I’m fine,” he replied curtly, thwarting her advances.

  “Did you have a good birthday?”

  “One of the best, baby.”

  “Good,” she answered. “Are we okay?”

  “Better than ever…”

  He tried to ignore the word “baby” flying in blaring red through his skull.

  “I want to make it better for you.”

  “I don’t think you can, Tal.”

  She pinched at the covers, lifting them upward. “Hmm…would you mind if I tried?”

  He tried to protest, but he couldn’t find the words. In seconds, the lamplight was out, he’d lost sight of her face, and her teeth were subtly biting at the brim of his boxers, tugging them downward.

  A good birthday indeed…

  HE AWOKE ONE MORNING A FEW DAYS LATER and she wasn’t lying beside him. Instead, she was outside on their back deck with a book about first-time mothers in her grasp, stifling the urge to cry.

  He placed his hands on her shoulders, and she sighed with relief.

  “Damn it,” she said. “This is scary…”

  He sat down beside her but remained quiet.

  He thought about questioning her place in the book, but he didn’t think it would do much good. Either way, something huge was coming, that would change both of their lives for better or for worse, and it was damn time that they started taking some action.

  Then his wife looked at him pointedly. A tear slide down her cheek in a serpentine motion, but her gaze never tarried.

  He reached for her hand.

  “My vagina will never return to its original level of youthful tightness,” she began, startling him. “Are you okay with that?”

  Then, he started to laugh. And she did too. At the audacity of her words, spoken at a time when they needed to buckle down and consider everything.

  He leaned in to kiss her, then pressed his forehead into hers. “I don’t care…we’ll figure out an exercise routine for your vagina afterward…there’s still hope.”

  She laughed harder. “Oh, baby,” she whispered against his face. “What are we going to do?”

  The loaded question stuck with him, even after Natalie had gone in a couple of hours later to take a nap. She was tired, and had thrown up a couple of times. She didn’t like it as much as he didn’t enjoy sitting there watching her do it, holding her hair back, embracing her after it was all done.

  “Go to bed,” he told her. “Just take some time to sleep.”

  She did just that. It was one of those rare occasions when she actually listened to him without putting up much of a fight. It was the tiny, fleeting glimmer of hope that made their relationship real.

  He sat on that back deck, and the sky faded above his head to a soft lavender. And he leafed through that baby book. He really tried to study it. There were some things that he could wrap his mind around easily: he was born in August of seventy-nine, he was almost thirty, he was a sports fanatic, a native New Yorker, more emotional than he should be, he was married to the girl he’d fawned over since day one.

  But this? What was he supposed to do with this?

  He could barely keep close reigns on his wife, vowing to keep her close each and every time she tried to stray from him.

  There were only so many times he could look at his bank account and see that there was no money. There were only so many times he could go on the internet and see that there was no other job for him.

  And Natalie. His fucking wife. What sort of future could he give her?

  “I regret to inform you, Mr. Greene, that your qualifications do not match what we need for a position of this caliber…”

  Damn it.

  He was just about to toss the baby book into the back lawn when Natalie reappeared in his basketball shorts and a slinky tank. His eyes flickered quickly to her belly, then back up to her face. He hoped she didn’t catch it.

  “What’s wrong, baby?” he inquired, as if he already didn’t feel it.

  “I’m scared, Brandy. Really scared. What are we going do do?”

  Now...he needed to start working.

  HELEN COMES TO VISIT

  “WE’RE TEN MINUTES AWAY, BOY.”

  The sound of Helen Chandler’s voice sent curdling shots of defeat through his body. He closed his eyes to recollect himself, as he ducked just out of Natalie’s earshot in their bedroom. There were a multitude of ways he could handle this, and none of them that he initially conjured up were pleasant. But he had to think about his wife an
d how happy she was about to be in only a matter of moments.

  Pinning the cell phone to his ear with his shoulder, he tumbled through the house quickly to ensure that everything was in its place. While Natalie slept the night before, he’d taken a good amount of time to straighten and wipe everything down, to the point where his wife thought he’d lost it.

  “What’s the matter with you?” she asked him, watching him drag a mop across the kitchen floor.

  “Nothing.”

  “You’re cleaning.”

  “So?”

  “Are you cheating on me?”

  “How did you draw that conclusion?”

  “I don’t know. But I’m not liking what I’m seeing.”

  He made sure that she awakened on the morning of her birthday to the entire contours of his naked body, sun-dripped and eager, waiting beside her for service.

  “Jesus,” she’d giggled. “Have I stepped inside of a cheap, online sex video?”

  “I’ll try not to be insulted by that. Now, go ahead and roll on your back. Oh yea...Happy Birthday.”

  Now, curiosity waned, she was in the shower, hopefully preparing herself for what she thought was a nice quiet day out and about. “Just the two of us,” she’d said. “And some more unbridled birthday passion, later.”

  For once, she needn’t think about how she planned on breaking the news to her family about her whittling educational goals and the baby growing in her belly. No one deserved the agony of explaining their shortcomings, however big or small, on the day of their birth. He’d do his best to keep out of both his wife and her mother’s mouths, but he wasn’t sure how long it’d keep. Even so, who was he to proffer any type of protection? What the hell could he provide?

  Toiling over his laptop, the number of employment opportunities he thought to apply for brought him nothing but a throbbing headache. Marketing Manager, Insurance Agent, Executive Assistant, Compliance Officer, Business Analyst, Entry Level Office Lackey. His resume read like an empty, cumbersome, trite advertisement for the bored, spoiled rotten, flighty and confused. He had half a mind to show up at various offices with a cardboard sign that read: “WELL-DRESSED AND ARROGANT WITH LITTLE EXPERIENCE AND A PREGNANT, DROPOUT SPOUSE, SEEKING SIX-FIGURE POSITION AS SOON AS POSSIBLE...NO INTERVIEWS NECESSARY”. In his dreams, they were accosting him with handsome offer letters in hand, tendered by snarky, leggy brunettes with narrow waists and huge tits.

  Whoa, there, Greene.

  But there was the one girl in his office: Camila. His supervisor’s secretary. Onyx curls that surpassed the small of her back, sun-speckled cinnamon skin, round, blushing cheeks that hovered over a wide, enthralling grin, and an ass that most men spent a good ten minutes discussing in the break room every morning. His coworker, Frank, was convinced that she’d had a thing for him.

  “You’d think that she was your secretary. As if you could be that lucky.” He’d always stare down at the framed photo of Natalie on his desk and grin, exhaling with resolution through his nose.

  She’d made a remark one day about how she refused to be subservient to her misogynistic supervisor a day longer, believing herself to be on the path to better.

  “You, too,” she’d said to him one day. “I see better for you, too. You’re far too talented for a place like this, a city like this. Why did you come here?”

  Often rising in a cool pool of his own sweat in the middle of the night, he’d soon be reminded of their mutual destitution, while his wife instinctively slid out of bed, murmuring, “It’s okay, baby, I’ll go get you a glass of water. Lay back down.” Then, he’d nestle his head into her breasts, inhaling her skin, curling into a shell of a fucking man, until he fell asleep again.

  But today was his wife’s twenty-fifth birthday. She needn’t be bothered - nor did he. And he needed to approach it with the level of obsession he’d had for her since day one. Day One.

  THE DOORBELL RANG, and Natalie was calling to him from their bedroom upstairs. “Baby, get it! I think it’s that package from UPS I’ve been waiting for!”

  Adjusting the fit of his gray button-down, he tumbled toward the door, and some unwarranted fit of fear came over him, as the silhouetted sight of his wife’s family loomed behind the door. As attractive and as regal as she presented herself, Helen Chandler had perfected a menacing scowl that she saved exclusively for him. Her striking resemblance to his wife only added insult to injury.

  He swallowed thickly as her two daughters, Sidney and Maya, and her mother, Marie, appeared behind her.

  “Helen.” He shuffled to the side so that she could pass.

  “Hello, Boy. You sure clean up nicely.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  Marie Chandler approached him, smiling warmly. He leaned down and gingerly kissed her cheek. “How are you doing, Brandon? You look...tired.”

  “I’m fine. Promise. You look incredible as always, Grandma. What’s your secret?”

  Natalie’s grandmother winked. “I’ll tell you later.”

  Since the elderly woman had footed almost half of their wedding expenses, she and Brandon had come to an understanding that no one else neither compared to nor were able to comprehend. Marie’s graceful, alluring spirit drew him in instantly, as she was one of the very few who could talk sense into that Helen Chandler, and convince her of her wrongdoings.

  He was forever grateful.

  Maya, the youngest Chandler sister, leapt into his arms, hooking her arms around his neck playfully. “Hey, you.”

  Grunting through a laugh as he steadied her on his body, he replied, “Hey, yourself. You’ve gotten a little heavier since the last time I saw you. Finally growing up, I see.”

  A graduate of the Savannah School of Art & Design, and Natalie’s sole confidant, Maya Chandler now spent the bulk of her adult life designing logos for local agencies in the low country, refusing to return to Decatur and settle down. She and Brandon had been in talks over recent weeks, but he’d neglected to tell his wife.

  Maya didn’t think it best, either.

  “You have about five seconds to get your hands off of my husband!”

  Natalie Chandler appeared at the top of the stairs with tears in her eyes. Her dark, coarse hair hung loosely like a curtain around her heart-shaped face, lifting in loose curls at the height of her cheeks. Even in a loose blouse and tight jeans, and little to no makeup, she looked incredible.

  Helen was smiling. “And you have about three seconds to get down those stairs and kiss your mama.”

  Jolting down the stairs, she clamored into her mother’s arms, sniffling wildly. “Dear God, I’ve missed you.”

  Helen, closing her eyes, placed a hand on the back of Natalie’s head, pulling her closer as she pressed her lips into her daughter’s cheek. “Happy Birthday, baby girl.”

  AS THE CHANDLER WOMEN SETTLED IN THE LIVING ROOM TO CATCH THEIR BREATH, he sauntered into the kitchen to grab the sweet tea Natalie made a couple of days earlier.

  Then, he felt someone grab him from behind. “You’re a bastard, you know that?”

  He turned around swiftly, pulling Natalie into him. “I’m sorry.” She kissed his lips once.

  “I’m not even going to ask how you did it.”

  He leaned down, pecking at the nape of her neck. “You’re welcome.”

  She grabbed his face and aligned his forehead with hers. “I love you. So much, damn it.”

  “Not as much as I do.”

  She looked up at him. “Just know one thing, Greene...”

  “What’s that?”

  “As soon as my family goes to sleep tonight...it’s on.” Writhing out of his grasp, she slapped his butt and skipped out of the room.

  HE MADE RESERVATIONS AT A RESTAURANT NEARLY THIRTY MINUTES AWAY. It was closest to the place where which Natalie’s birthday gift loomed; a reasonable price, surely, but would set them back nonetheless. He’d even taken the time to discuss it with his father a couple of days earlier, who’d made a point not to include much of wha
t he thought of this idea. Tritely resentful, he purchased it anyway, illuminated by the idea of how happy he’d make his wife by doing so. He even put in a little extra to have a person hand deliver the gift, right to the restaurant, just before dessert.

  Natalie Savannah Chandler Greene deserved a night of forgetting the bottomless pit of shit that he’d placed both of them in.

  And while the rest of the Chandler family sauntered into the restaurant slowly, Natalie halted her husband’s progression and pulled him aside.

  “Tonight. I’m doing it.”

  “Doing what, exactly?”

  “Telling my family about the baby. And school.”

  “Natalie, are you serious?”

  “I did it for us.” Arching up on her tiptoes, she pecked his cheek. “She’ll have to understand.”

  Natalie’s fearlessness at that moment ignited something in him, taking her by the hand and propelling forward with his wife in tow. They hadn’t once taken a moment to decide what it all meant, and how they were going to handle their predicament; but Natalie’s ease of mind made it feel a little better.

  Taking their seats at a round table in the back, the host wished Natalie a very “Happy Birthday” and offered her a choice of their finest house wines. Looking at him, her lips curled. “No wine for me. But, Brandon...please choose something for the table.”

  “Your sweetest and lightest, please.” Phew, what a save. Though, Helen Chandler wasted no time in eyeing her curiously through the flickering candlelight in the center of the table.

  “Drinking, Boy?” Helen leaned into the table, clasping her hands together. She looked dignified and intimidating in all black, her hair framing her face like an ominous shroud. If she stared any longer, he’d simply whittle away inside, strangely emasculating and curdling. “How are you going to get us home safely?”

  He blinked. Natalie placed a hand on his thigh.

  “Mama,” she began, tempering the warning in her voice. “A glass or two of wine isn’t going to hurt anyone. Let him have a little fun.”

  They locked eyes, and she winked at him.

  Helen relented. “What’s good here? Have you two dined here before?”