the dog days are over

"These are strange and breathless days, the dog days, when people are led to do things they are sure to be sorry for after." - from the Prologue of Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt




Three days ago marked a year from my separation from Bryan.


I will always remember waking up at Surfside Beach that morning, greeting Rocky, brushing my teeth, pouring my coffee, checking my phone for messages from the night before ( I always go to bed early when on vacation), and seeing a barrage of Facebook message from a guy in Kentucky who I'd never met before, telling me that he had evidence that my husband was cheating on me with his girlfriend. I immediately messaged him back, gave him my phone number, and he proceeded to text me photographs of the Facebook messages between my husband and his girlfriend.


I texted Bryan and told him to be out of the house when I got home.


He thought I had gone mad. " What the hell? Are you crazy??? Why???"


"I'm not discussing it. Just don't be there when I get home. I do not ever want to see you or hear your voice again. This is not negotiable."


He was flabbergasted. "Erin, you are being totally irrational. What is going on? I can't get out of the house in 3 days. You get out."


"Fine, I will. I will be there to get my stuff on Monday. Don't be there."


And that was pretty much that.


If brain waves usually navigate problems in late model sedans on freshly paved roads, with the AC blowing and Terri Gross's soothing alto lending pleasant diversion from the drive, my brain cells that day were doing their business more like the frogs from the highly pixellated game I played on my parents' IBM, trying to jump across one lane at a time without getting splatted.


I knew where I was - Surfside Beach. I knew who I was with - my mom, dad, and brother - and I knew where they were - on the beach. But I don't think I knew who I was at that moment.


So I headed to the beach with my summer reading: Gary Shteyngart's Super Sad True Love Story. I found my mom on the beach, sat down next to her, and tried to focus on Lenny and Eunice Park and then Bryan has been cheating on me. What do I tell my mom? Do I tell her now? Do I keep it to myself for a while and try to make sense of it and then tell her?


I read for an hour or so and then broke it to my mom. Told her about the messages, the photos, and that I had told him to be gone, and he wouldn't go, so I was leaving. Immediately.


The next few days of vacation were spent planning my escape. Dad, Rocky, and I returned to Wilson in my car and checked into a Microtel. We ate at the Cracker Barrel across the street from the hotel that night. I texted Bryan that Dad and I would be coming to pick up some stuff I needed for the work week and that he should be gone when I got there. He had the sense to listen. I don't know what my Dad would have done if Bryan would have been there, but it probably would have involved a phone call to the sheriff's department.


I took a half day on Monday so Dad and I could go see an attorney. At work, Candice volunteered her husband's truck and muscle to help me move. My therapist Deborah rented her elderly mother's vacant house to me for a month, and that Wednesday we left the Microtel for a three bedroom ranch on Poe Street.
Dad and I had some good times in that house. I'd come home from work, he'd have supper ready - grilled cheese sandwiches or pasta - and we'd watch Bryan Jennings and then a movie. I was probably losing my mind the whole time, but having Dad there made me feel like everything was going to be OK.


We tried to find an apartment for me and and my animals, but soon realized that the places that would lease to a woman with a 60 pound lab and two cats would be unaffordable after the couple hundred dollar monthly pet fees were added to already steep rent. So Dad decided to start looking at real estate. We found a thousand square foot cottage in a lovely neighborhood in Wilson, and moved me in the weekend Hurricane Irene was coming through town.


Certain songs will always take me back to those days. I had heard the song "Dog Days Are Over" by Florence + The Machine on Pandora at work, and it instantly became the anthem of my separation summer. Happiness hit her like a train on a track.


My brother and Dad had seen U2 in Nashville earlier that summer, and Florence had opened for U2. When they told me she had opened, I was so excited, and wanted to know all about Florence + The Machine's show, and could have cared less about U2.


The day we moved in was hot and muggy from all the rain the hurricane brought in. Dad and I were both in shorts and he had on his BIG DOGS t-shirt that always cracked me up: IF YOU CAN'T TEACH WITH THE BIG DOGS, STAY OUT OF THE CLASSROOM. As we unloaded my clothes from the van, we saw a guy walking toward the moving van.


Dad and I both had our arms full, but that didn't stop this guy from approaching and striking up a conversation with my dad about his Kentucky license plate, and he told us he was from Louisville. Is this guy for real? My arms are about to break from the weight of these clothes and he wants to chat? Is he blind? Come on Dad, give him the cold shoulder, let him know we're busy,since evidently he can't see that two people with their arms full of stuff are busy, and maybe he'll get the hint and wander back to wherever he came from. Where DID he come from? In those expensive looking jeans, spotless white loafers (!!!), white t-shirt, and - get this - U2 track jacket. A track jacket in the middle of summer? Who wears that? This guy can't be for real.


But then Dad commented on his U2 jacket, told him he'd seen U2 in Nashville earlier that summer, and the guy started talking about how many times he'd seen U2 and met Bono and whatever else crazy U2 people talk about when it's 90 degrees at 9 am and people are moving in and a girl's arms are about to fall off under the weight of 30 pounds of clothes on hangers.


He proceeded to walk onto the van with his can of beer - did I mention it was 9 am, and he was drinking beer? - to chat some more. He asked why we were moving in. I stifled the massive sigh that had built up in my chest, blinked hard so as not to roll my eyes too obviously, and told him I was separating from my husband. He said he was nearly divorced himself. I saw that Dad wasn't going to get this guy out of here, and he wasn't going anywhere, so I decided if he wasn't to leave he could at least be useful. I told him, maybe a bit forcefully, "You are welcome to help if you want." 

He said, "Sure!" And asked what he could get. I told him he could grab the kitchen chairs. Not only did he carry the chairs in, but then he helped Dad carry the kitchen table inside and then - to my great relief - my mattress and boxsprings.

After we had brought the big stuff inside, I came in and began unloading the kitchen boxes. To my immense irritation, this guy - by then we'd learned his name was Brian - wandered inside and asked me if he could sit down. I couldn't say no. So I told him he could. He plopped his beer can down on the kitchen table and began asking me about my separation. As we talked, we learned that each other's ex-spouses were bipolar and began relating to each other over the nutcasery we'd experienced in our marriages. Maybe he wasn't such a bad nut himself, after all. Maybe a bit crazy, with his white shoes and his fancy jeans and his layers, but not such a bad nut. Being married to someone with untreated bipolar disorder can turn anyone into a nut.

I listened to Florence + The Machine's "Dog Days Are Over" many times over the next few months. Oftentimes daily. Oftentimes on repeat. It became my mantra, my religion,  my armor.


Happiness hit her like a bullet in the back
Struck from a great height by someone who should know better than that
The dog days are over
The dog days are done


I wonder how many other people wore this song like a shield that summer.