DEMON LOVER

© by Ardis Coffman I asked Mayna out a second time because I didn't believe anyone could drink the way she did and stay sober as a Presbyterian choir soloist. At least I used to like to tell the story that way. I thought it made me sound sophisticated,

"with it" - not like a preacher's son from a small Iowa town. In 1967 when I was 21, I cared more for style than accuracy.

Not that I lied about her alcohol capacity. I didn't, but, of course, that wasn't the only thing that attracted me. She looked good - wild tawny hair, large brown eyes, long graceful legs. She had a supple, liquid way of moving, like the Slinkys we carried everywhere that fall. I liked being with a woman everyone noticed.

What's more she had a reputation on campus as an actress who just might be good enough for Broadway. She starred in "Tea House of the August Moon" and

"Splendor in the Grass." Drama professors hinted she possessed that special stage presence the great ones have. She reflected well on me.

At parties my fraternity brothers watched with wide eyes as she emptied glass after glass of beer, never slurring a word or losing her willowy grace.

On several inebriated occasions she drove a group of us back to the fraternity house, then returned to her dorm room for a few hours sleep. The next morning she rose for an early class we both attended and took notes for me while I lay in bed too hung-over to drag my body across campus. What a woman, my brothers said. What a woman!

At a fraternity picnic one night the subject of marriage came up. She surprised me with her quick "yes." That confused me; I wasn't quite sure what I asked.

"I thought you wanted to try your luck in New York," I said.

"Too much competition. I'd rather have a starring role in your life."

My good luck, I guess. Somehow Mayna never believed she was talented -

or pretty - or smart. She reacted with utter amazement when someone suggested she possessed these obvious qualities.

We married two months after we graduated.

I got a job in the Chicago City Planning Office and we started a family immediately. Our second child, a son, was born when our daughter was two. A tendency toward asthma in stressful situations kept me from serving in Viet Nam and gave me those extra years to make my mark in business. By the time the war ended, I had already received two promotions and climbed several rungs on the success ladder. Mayna and I thought of ourselves as happy, if we thought of such things at all.

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Somewhere around Mayna's 30th birthday she gained a few pounds. One day she brought home a book about a carbohydrate diet, The Drinking Man's Diet. The author of the book suggested that, since there are no carbohydrates in alcohol, dieters should drink when hungry instead of snacking. What an idea! I mentioned her new regime to a friend at work.

"Yeah, great," he said. "My uncle went on that diet and lost four pounds.

They had to take out his liver."

"My wife can handle it. She used to be the best drinker on campus, had a real talent for it," I bragged.

"That's an early symptom of alcoholism," he said, suddenly serious.

"Mayna alcoholic! Don't be silly. She's the most well adjusted person I known."

My sharp retort surprised us both, and embarrassed me. He opened his mouth as if to say something, then decided against it, giving me instead a cryptic half smile.

At that period in our lives, although we drank at parties, we seldom kept liquor in the house. That changed quickly. We had drinks before meals, wine with meals, several drinks through the evening. I couldn't keep up with her and work the next day, so I didn't try. The alcohol seemed not to affect her. She was never drunk and never hung-over. She also never lost the seven or eight pounds the carbohydrate diet promised to eliminate.

"Maybe you ought to take it easy on the sauce," I said one night looking into a cupboard at an empty wine jug. It had been full the night before.

"Is my drinking affecting you?" she asked.

"Not really."

"Is it affecting the children?"

"No"

"Then what's it to you?"

"I don't think the amount of alcohol you consume is good for your health, for one thing."

I didn't tell her that I'd recently asked my boss to come to dinner and his wife had refused. She had been our guest on two earlier occasions and she said spending an evening getting smashed was not her idea of a good time.

They're uptight people anyway. I didn't tell Mayna why they turned down our invitation.

She found a drinking buddy in Cub Scouts. A neighbor two blocks away acted as den mother for our son's troop. Mayna answered her plea for an assistant. One afternoon after the boys had been particularly rowdy the den mother offered Mayna a gin and tonic after they cleared the nine year olds from the living room. From then on she always stayed and drank after meetings, leaving our son to walk the two blocks home by himself. I usually ordered a pizza on Cub Scout night knowing Mayna would be home late and not interested in cooking.

"Why don't you get a job?" I asked her. "It would fill your free time."

"Doing what? What does a drama major do?

"You could be a secretary."

"No, thank you. Secretaries do the routine, boring jobs that free men to do creative work. I'd rather scrub floors. At least it's my floor."

I had to agree she managed the house well. Also, the children sparkled in both personal hygiene and manners. I had no complaints about her maternal abilities. As for her drinking habits, well whose spouse doesn't have an annoying quirk or two? The fact that she watched her weight, prevented the drinking from getting too bad. When it became clear that the low carbohydrate diet wasn't working, Mayna conscientiously counted calories. Wine, because of its lower calorie count, became the drink of choice, but it was hard to squeeze many glasses of wine into 1000 to 1200 calories a day.

She was drinking heavily, I think, about every three days. I'm not sure because by then she had begun to hide it from me. This pattern of dieting for several days then dousing her body with alcohol continued for several years.

At this point her habit affected our lives hardly at all. She belonged to a number of political organizations, PTA and she volunteered with children's theatre, directing two of the four yearly plays. At least twice a year she dragged me to an awards ceremony where she was given a plaque or framed certificate. She piled them on a high shelf in the garage where they gathered dust. My job - by that time I was assistant city manager - required that we attend many civic events. Mayna made a great impression, always beautifully dressed and coiffed. She never had more than one or two drinks at these affairs. When we returned I went to bed; Mayna went to the liquor cabinet and got down to the serious consumption.

She would stumble into bed at 2 or 3 a.m. smelling so strongly of wine my stomach turned. That's when she wanted to make love. Fortunately she always passed out as soon as her head touched the pillow.

The next day she would be recalcitrant. I knew I would come home to a sparkling clean house, my favorite dinner, and an agreeable, malleable spouse.

It was her way of apologizing. We never discussed her late night behavior. I suspect often she didn't remember.

On those "days after" she agreed to anything I wanted - new car, electrical tools, subscriptions to nudist magazines. Handling the budget was her job, and I knew my frivolous expenditures meant she would have to forgo buying things she wanted. Well, it served her right.

I got an offer from Arcadia to be their city manager. Although it is a town of only 20,000, paying less money than I deserve, the position appealed to me for several reasons.

The children were grown and we no longer concerned ourselves over taking them away from their schools and friends, so it seemed a good time to move. I would be in charge of the office; I liked that; and it was a chance to get Mayna out of Chicago into a rural environment. Somehow I thought her love affair with the wine jug might cool there. I was wrong.

"I'm not going to drink at home anymore," I told her. "New place; new rules." I didn't say she had to follow my lead, but for a time she seemed to.

There was no liquor in the house that I knew of. Yet, often in the evenings when I came home her eyes seemed red and puffy. And she grew distant, content to watch an endless stream of television movies while I worked at the computer.

She always carried a glass bottle of diet Pepsi gripped firmly in her hand.

One night I washed some garage rags in the basement and accidently caused the washer to flood. I pulled the appliance out from the wall to wipe up the spilled water, and as I did, I heard glass fall. I reached behind the machine and pulled out an empty vodka bottle and two full ones.

So that was it. She had switched from wine to vodka. No wonder I didn't smell it on her breath. When she was in the bathroom later that night I unscrewed the top on her Pepsi bottle and caught the unmistakable medicinal odor.

"There's a clerical job opening in the mayor's office," I said the next day.

"Why are you telling me about it?"

"You could apply. It would give you something to do."

She returned to her TV mystery, ignoring me, nursing her Pepsi.

One day I came home from work to find her in a high state of excitement.

"Why didn't you tell me there's live theatre here?"

I shrugged. "It never came up."

"It's wonderful, plays under the stars, out at the edge of town."

"I know. Didn't I show you that tourist brochure my office prepared?"

"I discovered it today. I drove by and there it was, a beautiful theatre carved out of a red rock hillside.

The table was still piled with the day's mail. Usually when I came home it was set for the meal. I could guess what would be served by the settings.

"What's for dinner?"

"I read for a part."

"Good. Are we ordering out or what?"

"I think I got it, the mother in 'The Subject Was Roses.'

"What?"

'The Subject Was Roses.' It's a play. The director took my telephone number. He said he'd call me tomorrow."

She did get the part. For the next six weeks I hardly saw her. She rehearsed every night. The whole town showed up for the opening. Agnes Penworthy, my new secretary, found me after the curtain.

"She's wonderful," Agnes gushed. "Not like amateur theatre at all. You must be so proud." I fought my way through the crowd to the dressing room where I found Mayna surrounded by a group of loud women.

"Did you like it?" she asked as she wiped off make-up with a tissue.

"You looked dumpy up there under the lights," I said.

"She's supposed to look dumpy." A dark woman's glare cut right through me.

"I don't know much about the stage," I said, "but I'm glad this is over.

Maybe we'll have meals on time now. "

No such luck. Her first performance led to a second and a third. She was always in rehearsal, out there in the woods at the edge of town. People stopped in my office to tell me how well Mayna performed in this show or that. The mayor said we made a great contribution to the cultural life of Arcadia. He meant Mayna.

"It would be nice if you made some money at this," I said one night when she came in late. "I looked at a new BMW today. It seems unfair that working as hard as I do I can't afford a new car."

"In a few years the children will be through college..."

"And I'll still be supporting you and your theatre habit. All my life it's been what you want and what the children want. When does my time come?"

"What do you want me to do?"

"I want you to forget this theatre nonsense and get a job."

She stood staring at me for a moment, then turned on her heel and left the room. I heard her down in the basement a few minutes later in search of her vodka bottle. I think she knew I was aware of her secret liquor supply, but we never discussed it. Anyway she drank less in the evenings now, since she couldn't start until rehearsals ended.

Sometime that night she fell on the stairs and hit her head on the railing. The crash woke me up, but when I got to her, she was unconscious and I couldn't pick her up, so I went back to bed. She crawled under the covers about dawn. The black eye and swollen nose lasted for three weeks.

We lay in bed one night talking after making love.

"I'm scared," she said.

"Of what?"

"I can't tell you."

"Of getting old?"

"No, not that."

We lay there for a long time without speaking and at last we went to sleep.

I looked through the incoming mail after work one day and came across an application for a job at a convenience store.

"What's this?"

"I got it from the 7-11. There's a sign in the window they need clerks."

"You're not planning to apply at a 7-11 for God's sake?"

"You said you wanted a BMW. I should be able to make enough to meet the payment and I can arrange my work schedule around rehearsals."

"Are you out of your mind? I'm city manager in this town and my wife works at a convenience store? How is that going to look?"

Mayna didn't apply at the 7-11 and she didn't try out for any more plays either. She watched a great deal of television and drank gallons of diet Pepsi laced with vodka. Yet, somehow the house was always clean and meals were on the table when I came home from work. Mostly we ignored each other. As soon as I finished eating I retired to my den and worked on the computer. She watched television until the early hours of the morning. On Friday nights we celebrated the end of a week with dinner at a Mexican Restaurant. I drank two Margaritas.

Mayna usually drank four. One night she ordered a diet coke.

"No Margarita?"

"I want to stay sober. We have to talk about something. I went to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting today."

"You what?"

"Two of my friends from the theatre group took me. I asked them to."

"Why?"

"Because I think I have a problem with alcohol and I don't know what else to do."

"You are not an alcoholic."

"I don't know. Maybe I am. I don't know what an alcoholic is."

At this moment the waiter interrupted with our order and we made small talk until he quit fussing and moved on.

"You've got a habit," I said. "It's just a habit. You quit smoking. You can quit drinking."

"I can't. I've promised myself a hundred times I won't drink anymore and I always do."

"Then quit, but no AA. How's that going to look? By tomorrow it will be all over town that my wife attended an AA meeting."

"It's anonymous. Who you see there, what you hear there, stays there.

That's what they said."

"No way. Not in this town." I couldn't believe she had so little regard for my position. Also, from what I had heard Alcoholics Anonymous is a spiritual program. Mayna and I are agnostics, if not outright atheists. "Have you thought about how you're going to handle all that religious mumbo jumbo?"

"Darlene said I didn't have to. She said I could just take what works for me and leave the rest."

This passive recitation of her friends' clichés made me furious. She had more brains than that. "Show a little strength of character for God's sake.

Just quit drinking. You don't have to make a three act drama out of it."

She sighed. "Okay. Starting tomorrow. Order me a Margarita."

On Monday I bought the BMW. There's something about a new car that lifts your spirits like nothing else in the world. I felt reborn behind that wheel.

What the hell, life is short. I'll pay for it somehow, I told myself. Mayna handles the bills. Let her figure out how to squeeze the money out of our budget. Maybe she'll see she needs a job.

I traded in both our cars to buy the Beemer. That left her isolated at home all day without transportation, but it was a small town. She could walk where she needed to go. Frankly, I didn't want her driving anymore. She hit the bottle all weekend after our outing that Friday night, and this time she made no attempt to hide it from me. I didn't want her driving in that condition.

The following Friday she showed up at my office, eyes wild, hair uncombed, obviously drunk. And at three o'clock in the afternoon.

Agnes ushered her immediately into my office to get her out of the waiting room. She fell into the upholstered chair in front of my desk. "I want to use the car," she mumbled.

"Did you walk downtown?"

"I want to go out to the theatre. I want to watch rehearsals."

"You're not going anywhere in the shape you're in."

"I could get the spare set of keys you keep under the engine block." Her belligerence surprised me.

"You just go sit in the conference room. Agnes will show you where it is. As soon as I can get loose I'll drive you home."

About 15 minutes later I heard the crash of metal from the street three stories below my office. A moment passed and again the screech of metal ripped through the summer afternoon. This time the whole building shook. The chandelier above my desk swung like a bell. I pulled up the mini-blinds and looked down just as my BMW backed into the street, and then ran at full speed into the concrete side of city hall. The front end of my beautiful red Beemer twisted and looped into a metal maze. The car backed over the curb again and into the street pointed for another run at the building.

I didn't wait for the elevator. I took the steps three at a time down to the street. A crowd gathered, serious faced, pointing and shouting at my wife in the driver's seat. A man in jeans and a T-shirt grabbed the door and tried to pull it open, but she sped away from him, up over the curb, through a bed of nasturtiums and into the building again. A cloud of steam rose out of the crumpled hood as the radiator burst. This time the BMW would not back up. She ground repeatedly at the starter, but the car sat dead against the wall, its fenders and drooping bumper decorated with red and orange flowers. I commanded my legs to move, but they would not. The crowd stared. I stared.

Above City Hall a pigeon complained in the sudden quiet. This could not be happening to me.

Mayna unfastened her seat belt and tried to get out, but the driver's door bent and jammed. She slid across the seats and kicked open the passenger door.

The crowd backed away as she moved in their direction. She looked a madwoman, hair wild, make-up smeared. She threw her head back and laughed.

"Don't make these God damned cars like they used to. Not like they used to," she shouted in a loud stage voice.

A police car with sirens screaming sped around the corner and pulled to a stop next to my car. Two policeman jumped out. I knew them both, although in my shocked state I could not think of their names.

"What's going on here?" the larger officer asked me.

"My wife. She's having a breakdown or something."

"Just stay there and let us handle it," the smaller officer ordered.

The police took Mayna to the hospital where she was checked into the psycho ward. I spent an hour with the psychiatrist.

"How much does your wife drink?" he asked.

"Not much," I said. "A little wine with dinner. I don't know what got into her today." I sure did not plan to betray Mayna to this prying stranger.

They kept her at the hospital for three days.

"Menopause," the doctor said pursing his mouth and nodding reassuringly on the day she was released. We stood in the hall of the hospital as a nurse pushed her out in a wheelchair. "It will pass," he said. I'll begin seeing her when I have an opening. It should be about six weeks. Meanwhile the tranquilizers will help." He nodded toward a plastic bag full of happy pills in her lap.

The family's nasty little secret had burst into the sunlight. Every time I saw two Arcadians talking I assumed they discussed Mayna's escapade. It was the worst week of my life. I wanted to crawl in somewhere dark and not see anyone, but that was not possible.

What to do about her? Leave her? I sure didn't want to do that now when my career was going so well. Maybe it would get better. She sure caused no trouble at the moment. The tranquilizers turned her into a virtual zombie. She sat all day in front of the TV. When I entered the room she started, seeming to forget who I was. Well, at least she wasn't drinking - or I didn't think so.

One morning about 3 a.m. I woke with the feeling something was wrong.

Mayna was not in the bed beside me. I went downstairs to the kitchen, checked the basement and looked at last in the garage. My rental car was gone. Where would she go this time of night? Suddenly I remembered a conversation we had earlier in the evening. She told me she wanted to try out for the part of Clytemenestra in Agamemnon.

"Not just 'no'," I said, "but hell no."

She hadn't argued with me, but then she never did. Mayna's way of fighting back was to run into the arms of her demon lover. When she finished drinking herself into a stupor, she probably drove out to the theatre. I called a taxi. It took him about 20 minutes to arrive and he showed more than a little curiosity about my 3 a.m. drive to the woods. "I have to go get my wife," I told him.

The full moon turned the woods outside Arcadia green and silver, and as we approached the Theatre Under the Stars, it seemed a spotlight prepared by nature just for me. The seats carved from red limestone rose up the side of the canyon, glowing pink in the moonlight, purple in the shadows. I told the driver to turn down the side road to the parking lot. When we arrived at the chained entrance, I instructed him to wait for me by the side of the road.

I climbed over the chain and hurried up the tree lined drive. I had no trouble making my way across the parking lot and into the theatre entrance. The moon shone brightly on the blacktop. I walked through the arch into the seating area. The theatre is built in such a way that the stage is invisible from the road, but from this vantage point I looked directly down on it.

A figure in a white dress stood center stage raising a sword above her head. It was Mayna in her nightgown. She shouted:

"Evil for evil to an enemy

Disguised as friend, weave the mesh straitly round him."

"Mayna, what are you doing?" I yelled at her. I ran down the limestone steps two at a time toward the stage. Suddenly the asthma flared up making me unable to breathe. I sat for a moment my head between my knees. Then I continued down the stone steps struggling to get my breath.

She turned and watched me come, an expression of puzzlement on her wild face.

"Agamemnon, I slew thee," she shouted up at me.

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I reached the base of the grand stand and gasped for breath as I climbed the steep steps to the stage. By the time I got to center stage I was half bent over and panting. "Mayna, put down the sword. We're going home." Her eyes were unfocused, her features slack. I reached for her arm, but she shook me off and raised the weapon higher, holding it with both hands. She backed a few steps away from me.

"Even as the trammel hems the scaly shoal, I trapped him with inextricable toils,"

Before I could stop her she brought the sword down with all her might, hitting me on the shoulder.

"Then smote him, once, again - and at each wound,

"He cried aloud."

I screamed in pain as the sword dropped again. I fell to my knees, tried to rise, tried to pull at her gown. The stage grew dim and darkness closed around me.

She raised the sword again. "Once more I smote him, with the last third blow, Sacred to Hades, saviour of the dead. And thus he fell."

It was the last thing I heard before I blacked out.

I learned later that the taxi driver saved my life. Though I had asked him to wait in the road, he elected to follow me up to the theatre. Thank God for the curiosity of small town people. He wrested the sword from Mayna's hand before she could deliver the killing blow. When she broke away from him and stumbled off into the woods, he ran back to his taxi and called an ambulance from his car phone.

The police found Mayna at sunup at the base of a steep ravine.

Apparently in her dark run through the woods she failed to see the drop-off.

They took me in a wheelchair to identify her bruised and broken body. As long as I live I will never forget the sight of her bare feet, bloodied and cut to the bone in places. The coroner said she was so full of booze and tranquilizers she probably didn't feel a thing.

I'm fortunate that the sword was a stage prop and not very sharp. All the same I took a long time recovering from the wounds. The physical ones healed more easily than the emotional.

I look back sometimes and wonder if I could have done things differently.

I hated Mayna's drinking. I felt it reflected on me and I don't like looking bad. But perhaps I made some bad decisions.

Too late to worry about that now, of course.

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