Teotihuacán, by Marjorie Robertson

Concierto, photography by Pete Turner (USA) 1975. Album cover for Concierto by Jim Hall (sextet, USA) 1975.

Teotihuacán 

Heather met Andrew Saint-Fleur, III. over a bottle of gin at a fraternity party at Stanford. He was  finishing a law degree, and she was in her last year of anthropology in the college. Some months  later when he proposed, she gave him a practiced smile and accepted. She was relieved. With the  idea of marriage came direction, though her mother had other ideas. 

“You have a degree, now. You can do whatever you want,” her mother said when her oldest daughter showed up wearing the engagement ring. She walked back and forth, gesturing  with both hands for emphasis. “Get a job, see the world. Why do you want to waste yourself on a  frat boy?” 

“I want to be married.” 

“Oh, that’s foolish!” her mother cried. “You’re smart and pretty! You can have anyone  you want, do anything you want.” 

“I’m not that pretty,” she said. “Besides, he comes from a good family, and his job pays  him more than I could ever make.”

“You don’t have to marry into a holier-than-thou family to earn a decent living. You can make your own way in life.” 

This was a standard phrase of her mother’s with good reason. After the death of her  husband, she had moved to California, raised three children alone—gone to work, cooked  countless tuna casseroles, patched hand-me-downs—and became a person Heather could only  admire and never imitate because she knew her own limitations. Now each week her mother and  her gaggle of friends got together to do yoga and talk about empowerment. She was like the  neighbourhood gypsy, all in flowing, soft, purple things and shawls smelling of patchouli left in  the air wherever she’d been and wandered away. 

In a rare outburst, Heather said, “I want a good life for me and my children. Getting  married is the only way that could ever be.” 

“I see,” her mother said gently. “If you do marry that man, I just hope it’s not for the sex.  It wears off in no time.” 

Heather was horrified. Drew was nothing like her father, a good-looking farmhand who’d  proposed to her mother in a field on bended knee, a beer in one hand and an engagement ring in  a paper bag in the other.  

Sex was not the reason, but money was. It was only part of a more complex set of  circumstances, a collage of pieces that formed a picture of how she imagined herself to be. The  role of sparkling hostess of dinner parties, luxurious lady of the mansion, a woman of taste and  refinement—they were all within her and waiting for the right opportunity to shine. Everything  she’d ever wanted was now within reach, and it looked nothing like the small, plain life she had  growing up. Stability was another reason. She loved him enough, she thought, and didn’t want to  struggle the way her mom had.

Marrying Drew would realize this dream. 

In the waning months of her senior year, she left the engagement ring at home for  safekeeping and treaded carefully through narrow passageways and ruins in southern-central  Mexico, part of a university-sponsored excursion for anthropology majors. Digging with a trowel  or a pickax in an ancient ceremonial centre, she and other Americans worked alongside students  and professors from the University of Guadalajara. At first, she barely tolerated the hard labour, the  sweating bodies of strangers, the dirty nails and the bruises. Quickly the work became natural and  methodical, and when she found broken cookware from commoner households of Mesoamerica,  the others hugged her and treated her to dinner in a local town. This pleased her enormously.  

That was how she met Carlos. Within one day of their first meeting at the dig, his face seemed to mirror hers, and their voices combined in a familiar harmony. On weekends at night  she and Carlos went out with the other diggers—talking, laughing and telling stories. While they  danced, they shared secrets. By day they explored outside the city places covered in trees,  covered in birds, and on a break in digging, they took to side streets where scents of chocolate  mixed with cinnamon or pepper with chilies came from open windows, and people called to the  diggers to come in and eat. 

On the day she was to leave Mexico, he was waiting for her outside the university  dormitory. In darkness, the rain, incessant against the windshield on the highway since leaving  Guadalajara, had changed into quiet drizzle by the time they arrived at Teotihuacán. With a single mission, they climbed the Pyramid of the Sun, rising above stone tombs of ancient ancestors. A liquid dawn appeared on the horizon while in deep shadow of the ruins they held  hands. Finally, morning came luminous and blinding. The warmth of late spring crept over the  land. A sudden blade of wind blew through her hair, and she shivered. They looked at one another. Miraculously, after all they’d been through, his face had not changed, but perhaps their hearts would break from loss. This thought played out in her mind. 

He must have understood because he cooed, no, no, and held her, smoothed her hair and  touched her face. 

“Carlos,” she said. 

He kissed her for the first time, the only time.  

When they parted, he gave her a book of Mexican poetry. On the inside flap, he had  inscribed the words, Joy is a stream that flows from the mountains of primeval sorrow. The falling tears of the great Inca Creator, Viracocha, are drops of rain falling to the earth. Sorrow  is the source of life itself. 

When Heather returned to the States, Drew’s mother, Mrs. Saint-Fleur, hosted a garden  party to announce her son and daughter-in-law’s new home, only two blocks from their Victorian  mansion. Several wise investments and tax breaks had made her wealthy in-laws even wealthier.  Though they feigned modesty, Heather recognized the supreme confidence they held in their  ability to control their world and understood it to mean a great deal more. Those at the party who  were unaccustomed to privilege—she and the servants, she imagined—were excluded from  discussions of money and intimate conversations of property and tax shelters. Still, in her renewed  hopefulness, she reserved judgment; though she had kept her mother from coming by saying it was  a small gathering of his side of the family. 

To her friends, her good fortune was astounding. Life had dealt her a succession of  achievements that they’d only dreamed was possible—marriage to a wealthy man and now a home  to call her own. There had been no effort, Heather told them. It was meant to be. Some things are like that. She hadn’t told them how she’d molded her appearance and opinions to reflect Drew’s  tastes. 

For the party, Mrs. Saint-Fleur had spent all day in the kitchen, orchestrating the selection  and placement of food to best enhance visual presentation. The spread was magnificent— gorgonzola cheese, pesto spread, and smoked salmon with capers—food she’d never tasted, but was  excited to try. Mr. Saint-Fleur raided his own stock of alcohol, carefully choosing the Courvoisier,  an old scotch, and an assortment of Sauternes and dry red wine. To his wife’s horror, he pried their  guests with his favourites. 

Heather had no complaints about her in-laws. The Saint-Fleurs regularly hosted  extravagant events, including the wedding, at their expense, and she was grateful to be free of  worry over money, a feeling she’d rarely experienced growing up and getting through school on  loans and a part-time job. 

Drew Saint-Fleur, her husband, strode toward her with a highball in hand and began  speaking, almost shouting at her, beckoning her wildly, slurring his words and saying, “Baby,  come here, come here.” 

For a moment, she could not hear him and merely observed him as a stranger, distant and  unconnected, and wondered momentarily why she’d married this man, of all people, a guy who’d  been arrested for DUI, though that was a few years earlier with his fraternity brothers and  nothing had happened since. 

Drew’s mother intercepted her son and silenced him with one harsh word, “Now!” She  led him indoors, he with an amused look on his face. 

Heather did not care about Drew’s occasional public drunkenness. She could accept rare  binges in social settings for the sake of a good life the rest of the year. Her mother-in-law, on the  other hand, intimidated her.  

“Jennifer…oh, heavens, I mean Heather,” Mrs. Saint-Fleur summoned her as she might  one of her servants with a distracted wave of the hand.  

Mrs. Saint-Fleur had no memory for names, which didn’t seem to bother her. She was  impossibly groomed and seemed capable of strolling through a hurricane without having a hair  slip out of place. She’d learned that this woman had no fear of even—in her mother-in-law’s  words--the most vicious attacks on my character by a small cadre of women at a local Rotary  Club meeting. Her mother-in-law had responded in her usual way, flashing a brilliant smile and  suggesting the offending individuals had misunderstood.  

Heather wished she could be more like her. She felt a cool hand wrapped around her  wrist and thought she could overpower this woman, if she had to.  

“Come with me,” Mrs. Saint-Fleur said. “I want to introduce you to Mrs. Garamond— who has momentarily disappeared—there she is—because she’s from Pennsylvania, which isn’t  far from your home in … Where are you from?” 

“Illinois,” she said. 

“You grew up in a small town,” the woman said and laughed in a way that let Heather  know she felt sorry for her.  

Heather felt the stab of insult and distractedly fished a tissue from her purse. “Have I offended you?” Mrs. Saint-Fleur said and waved her hand as if waving away a  fly. “But you’re family,” she said and leaned in to embrace her briefly.

“As I was saying, Mrs. Garamond is from Pennsylvania and is the second cousin of  Drew’s high school sweetheart, Julia, who spent most of her childhood here, which is how we  know her parents. Julia’s father and my husband worked together in real estate for many years  and to this day do everything together, play golf, go to the investment club meetings and so forth.  We all thought for certain they would eventually marry. Then that awful McCoy boy stole her away. Broke Drew’s heart. He’s still very sensitive.” 

Drew’s mother paused to retrieve a mint from a flat, gold case she kept within reach. An awkward moment passed, and Heather said, “We never talk about that.” “

Of course, you don’t,” Mrs. Saint-Fleur said, snapping the case shut. “But I am certain  you will be kind enough to humour him when he gets in one of his sour moods.” 

She understood perfectly her future mother-in-law’s tacit message. No reconciliation  would be possible with this woman who seemed intent on directing her daughter-in-law’s new  life. Without some kind of agreement, even her home would be no sanctuary from the unceasing  prodding only a few short blocks away. She felt a wave of fatigue wash over her. “You look pale. You should lie down.” 

“I guess I am tired,” Heather said. 

She retreated to the salon where she lay on the chaise-longue. The draperies had been  pulled back, affording her a view of the action on the patio and in the yard. Mrs. Saint-Fleur strode about, gesturing around the yard, no doubt speaking about her  possessions. Never one to discuss ideas or politics, she could be overheard talking about  people—whether they were upstanding or trash—and things—vacations, cars, clothing.  Anything that could be bought was an opportunity for boasting. Arrogance veiled in an  innocuous discussion of money. 

Heather took pleasure in gazing at the lush yard lined with reddish terra cotta lanterns the  Saint-Fleurs had picked up on their annual trek to Mexico, or Mayheeco, as Mrs. Saint-Fleur was  fond of hearing herself say. As in, we went to Mayheeco and for an entire week sat on the beach  under blue canopies drinking margaritas.  

Mexico. 
 
In Heather’s chest, anticipation rose to the edges of her teeth and to the tips of her ears.  Teotihuacán. Her mouth formed the word without a sound. City of the Gods in the far-flung  countryside.  

One of her mother’s platitudes—things people say and don’t follow—came to her then:  The thing you resist is the very thing you need to find the courage to do. 

Courage was a thing Heather had seen, but not experienced. When her brother organized  rights protests and marched in the streets of Washington, D.C., she knew she was witnessing  courage. When her sister became a high school history teacher in Chicago, she knew it was  courageous, too. But she wasn’t like them.  

What did she know of great courage? It took all her resolve to have a graceful  conversation with her mother-in-law. Her courage in Mexico had been without thought, as if being there was meant to be. Where had it gone?  

After the party, the feelings stirred by her mother’s warning grew. Sadness weighed on  her, yet she remained firmly reconciled to her commitment. She cared for Drew—a watered  down sensation, not the ardent clarity of love—had taken the vows and promised herself to leave  behind all selfish acts from that time forward. Each day she would start again and try to rouse herself to be a better wife and person. As if to cleanse her spirit, she sent the book of Mexican  poetry from Carlos to her sister for safekeeping with other pieces of girlhood—her beauty contest crown, fairy tale books from childhood, old photographs. To her amazement, sending  away the cherished objects of her past like scraps of paper blown in the wind only frustrated her  efforts.  

Her heart remained painfully remote.  

At first, Drew reacted with concern and patience to the changes in her temperament.  He told her, “You’re so listless. Are you depressed?” 

She told him she was happy.  

“Maybe you’re ill,” he suggested. 

She said she felt fine. 

“Maybe you’re pregnant,” he tried. 

His concern slipped easily into complaint. She was too passive, almost bored, in  lovemaking. She’d stopped cooking for him on weekends when their cook had time off. Hunger  was foreign to her, though he took her out to eat at gourmet restaurants. She was shrinking  before his eyes. There was definitely something wrong with her.  

At night she slept fitfully between exhaustion and wakefulness, dreaming of a passionate  reunion with Carlos surrounded by palm trees and tropical blooms. She surprised him by  wrapping her arms around him from behind and pressing her face into his damp neck, coloured a  high burnished sheen. His nape smelled of lime and warm, sweet grass, hers of coconut and  passion fruit. She wasn’t shy. She didn’t feel guilty. When you’ve found someone under the coarse, laborious conditions of a dig, you toss out fear and regret. You have a bond few could  understand. 

He ran his hand through his dark, curly hair and rested his head in her lap where she stroked his cheek. She dreamed of him looking up at her eyes calmly and curiously, as though at a placid pool of blue water, contemplating something shiny within, something like a treasure he  wanted to have and cradle in the palm of his hand forever. There they recounted faithfully  everything they’d experienced since they last met. Every exacting, unpredictable moment. 

Whenever she woke at dawn, she rose from her husband’s bed and looked out at the bay  from on high. She could still recall standing in the ether of the great Pyramid of the Sun. The  clear blue of the sky, vast like an ocean, and the russet skin of Carlos, as permanent and real as  the earth itself. 

One day after Drew had left for work, she went to the Mission District, a section of San  Francisco she’d never seen before, something her sister would have done without hesitation and  something she would never have done before Mexico, before Carlos. The story, if she met  anyone they knew, however unlikely, was she was planning a special meal for Drew and had to  go to that neighbourhood to find the right ingredients. No one would doubt the dedication of a  wife. 

Along each avenue, around each turn, she expected to see Carlos. Instead she discovered  vibrant murals, music bouncing out of the open windows of passing cars and shopkeepers  peppering one another with jokes. The unexpected newness of the air—auto repair shops and  next door a tienda latina, the tangled odors of engine oil and cooking beef and dry, pungent  spices—quickened her heart.  

As she wandered, the fragile honeycomb of her memory of Mexico began to rattle. Panic  rose in her throat. If she could not conjure the feelings of Mexico into reality, that time with  Carlos could be reduced to something in the past, a brief period in the timeline of her life, a footprint on the beach entirely wiped away by foam and water. Perhaps it wasn’t real. It was all  just a game she’d played in her head, not unlike her adolescent imaginings of a mythical prince.

On a corner, a crowd had gathered in a parking lot where a Mariachi band dressed in charro suits and enormous hats was tuning instruments. The music began, and the people  threaded out of the crowd to dance. The happiness, the dancing, the strumming guitars—it was  exhilarating! She danced with a stranger, and they laughed. An hour passed, and the sky began to  mist. She was covered in rain, covered in wildness, and she felt the nearness of Carlos.

​The music stopped. It was time to leave. The people dispersed, and she followed them  reluctantly to the street. The sunshine returned. For some time, she wandered, disheveled and  grinning, the embodiment of her joy like a blaze for all to see as she stopped in shops to buy  ingredients for her husband’s special meal. Eventually, she did not know how, she found her car  and drove home. 

At home her days were divided into daydreams and household distractions. Her husband’s voice,  like a wooden bell, barely caught her attention. Finally, she conceded to his demands and went to  the doctor, who prescribed lithium for a brief time to lift her apparent sadness. The peaks and  valleys of her moods became like gentle backcountry roads, those safe spaces of home. To her  relief, the sour taste the drug left in her mouth diminished her husband’s desires. 

Shortly after another doctor’s visit, she learned she was pregnant. Her pregnancy was  greeted with zealous joy by her in-laws and quiet congratulations by her mother, who added, “You  will now be bound to your husband permanently as if you were in chains.”
​
For the first time in Heather’s life, the opinions of others mattered little. Pregnancy had  made her special. It was something she was doing on her own, something brave she alone could  do. No one else could have this baby for her.  
​
Her newfound self-confidence changed her. Whenever she entered her mother-in-law’s  home, she floated in gracefully and announced her decorating plans for the nursery, the type of  delivery she would have and the girl she’d hired to help with the newborn. So convincing was  she in this role that no one told her what to do, and this pleased her enormously. Her confidence  ebbed and waned, a circumstance her mother-in-law seemed to exploit to her advantage. Heather  calmly retreated into thoughts of the baby to conjure her own contentment. She had her sister  return the box of treasured things and grew content in remembering her childhood—before  marriage, even before Carlos—and in knowing that it would never change.

Marjorie Robertson

Marjorie Robertson is an essayist, novelist, short story writer and multilinguist. ​Her first novel, Bitters in the Honey, was a semifinalist in the 2014 William Faulkner-William Wisdom Writing Competition. Currently, she is working on another novel titled, The Gleaners. ​Her other interests include creating art + text, studying how visual and sound affect the written word, and teaching writing to English language learners and the 1.5 generation.