The Condo

She is utterly ridiculous and it is ridiculous what she does to them. Margaret had loved this man and raised these boys. This man and these two almost men fawn all over Angel with no perception of how foolish she is with her too large hair and her too bedazzled outfits. Bedazzled for Christ sake! Literally bedazzled. The woman that she had been abandoned for, who would be the step mother to her two brilliant sons, owned and regularly used a Bedazzler to “glitz up” the circa 1990’s denim that she favored. “Glitz up”, the term that Angel used so proudly with zero hint of shame.

Margaret looked around the vacation condo that they had shared as a family. It too was broken now.  After 15 years it had begun to show the markings that time tends to streak across places and people. Margaret had had a nice time here with the boys for the past four days but it was time to leave and allow her replacement to take over for the long weekend. As she collected the last of her things she took in the scene and it struck her that this may well be her last time here.

The thing that Margaret loved most about the condo was the way that the natural surroundings flowed through the large windows allowing you to be a part of them. There was nothing natural about Angel. Angel looked like an oversized, over “glitzed up” piece of furniture that clashed with the rocky mountain decor. She was like of one of those gaudy white plastic christmas trees stuck in the middle of a forest of evergreen.

“Mom!” Margaret was pushed out of her thoughts by the sound of Max’s voice. “Mom, you better get on the road if you are going to make your flight.” She realized that she had become the interloper. Somehow, to them, she had become the ill fitting piece of furniture in the room. She resented being the outsider in her own family. She wanted to be one of those women that welcomes the second wife into the fold and allows her to become a part of what she did not help to build, but she couldn't and she wouldn’t.

“Sorry. I’m going. I was lost in thought for a moment,” she lied, “that picture of Seamus as a puppy… I miss him.” Seamus was the retriever the boys had woken up on their first Christmas morning here 15 years ago. A cherished memory for the four of them. So, without actually having to lift her leg and mark her territory she reminded Angel that she would always be the outsider, and she said goodbye to her boys.