Jennifer Haigh by Condition Page A

e-mails; but when Frank traveled to New York for the occasional conference, his son was never free for lunch. Frank had wondered lately if Billy were avoiding him. Always he pushed the thought away.
    He changed lanes quickly, cutting off a Jeep Cherokee in the passing lane. The other driver leaned on the horn.
    "I could have invited Scott," said Gwen."I doubt he would have come, though. He's got his hands full with Penny and the kids."
    "Sure." Frank couldn't remember the last time he and Scott had spoken. He wondered, now, if his son were like the young fathers he saw trekking along the Charles on Sunday afternoons, carrying babies in backpacks or slung across their chests. It was the sort of spectacle you never saw back in the sixties, when Frank's children were small. He was privately glad to have been spared the indignity of toting a baby in a sling, which struck him as unmanly. Was this why his kids didn't want to see him? he thought irritably. Because he'd never pushed them around town in a stroller?
    He felt suddenly unmoored, unsure what to do next. Stop by the lab and see Margit? That, he thought despairingly, would kill some time. The evening, so promising a moment ago, stretched dismally before him. How strange it was, this annual tradition, how stripped down and hollow: father and daughter exchanging gifts in a restaurant, two days before Christmas. Billy's presence would have changed everything. For once it might have felt like a family gathering, something Frank hadn't experienced in years. Of course, the kids got plenty of that at their mother's house. Year after year, Paulette was hell-bent on reenacting the genteel New England Christmas of her childhood: formal dinner, midnight mass, opening presents around the Douglas fir; rituals in which, to his everlasting relief, he was no longer required to take part. Only Gwen continued to make time for her father. Only Gwen, perhaps, had nothing better to do.
    He glanced over at his daughter. To anyone who knew Turners syndrome, her condition was obvious. She was short but not petite; her broad chest seemed to be sized for a much taller person. Her short legs were thick and muscular. She had the powerful build of an Olympic child gymnast: the narrow hips, the shield chest. Watching the games last summer, Frank found himself wondering if all the team were Turners.
    At their young ages—thirteen or fourteen—it was hard to tell.
    Severe cases of Turner's, where a girl's second X chromosome was missing entirely, were easy to identify. Small stature plus certain telltale physical features—low-set ears, a low hairline, folds of excess skin at the sides of the neck—could have no other cause. But Gwen's second X chromosome wasn't missing, just partially deleted. This explained her asymptomatic childhood and probably, her good health as an adult: by Gwen's age, many Turners women developed serious ailments. Thirty percent had kidney abnormalities; a congenital bicuspid aortic valve was extremely common. But with most of her second X chromosome intact, Gwen had escaped these complications entirely.
    Frank was still married to Paulette when he'd had Gwen karyotyped. From a medical standpoint, the news could hardly have been better; but Paulette refused to hear it; she was simply furious. Frank's explanations were wasted on her. To his amazement, she seemed determined to learn as little about Turner's as possible, as if ignorance would make Gwen's condition disappear. Any objective discussion of Turner's incensed her. What sort of man—sort of person —could think this way? she demanded. What sort of father could talk about his own child in such a cold and clinical way?
    The truth was that Frank had been a scientist longer than he'd been a father. If he'd been trained to observe in a certain way, to describe his observations in precise terms, that did not imply a lack of feeling for the subject. Concern for the subject, deep concern; anger and protectiveness on her