Jennifer Haigh by Condition

hadn't spoken of Gwen's condition in years.
    It's certainly consistent with the literature. The research is sketchy, but there's some suggestion that Turner girls don't pick up on nonverbal social cues, or respond to them appropriately. He paused. It's not you, Paulette. It's just the way she is.
    To her surprise it had comforted her, his precise way of explaining things. At one time she would have been angry. The phrase "Turner girls" would have incensed her. This isn't a clinical trial , she would have told him. She's not a research subject. She's our daughter.
    For a brief time, not long after the divorce, they had stopped speaking entirely; but in her heart Paulette continued to argue with him. Day after day, they had vicious quarrels in her head. Making tea, or driving to Brimfield, she'd catch herself talking to Frank, still haunted by all the things she should have said, the brilliant arguments that would stun him into silence. That would force him to admit, finally, how wrong he'd been.
    But in recent years, something had shifted. The quarrels had simply stopped. Now, when she thought of Frank at all, she remembered the days of their courtship, the handsome boy he'd been, how attentive, how dear. Lately she wondered how he fared with Gwen. Did their daughter talk to him when she visited Cambridge? Did he enjoy these visits? Did they ever discuss Paulette?
    She finished her champagne and took her empty flute to the kitchen. The Christmas tree, a huge Douglas fir, stood in the foyer, waiting for the children to arrive. I ought to plug in the lights, she thought wearily, but she hadn't the heart. She was fifty-six years old; she had lived through more Christmases than seemed necessary. A Christmas every few years would suffice. Every four years, like leap year or the Olympics. Surely that would be enough.
    As always, her tree was beautifully decorated. Grandmother Drew's glass bells and wooden soldiers; Grandmother Broussard's angel at the top. Piles of gifts ringed the tree. Most were for Scott's family: good sheets and towels, books for the children, the sorts of things she imagined they needed. It was hard to know where to begin; it had seemed to her, the one time she'd visited them in Gatwick—a town named for an airport!—that they needed everything . The house, a cramped ranch with low ceilings and small windows, was oppressively cluttered—newspapers and catalogs, the children's toys. Yet if you looked closely, it was apparent that Scott and Penny owned almost nothing. The walls were bare, the windows shaded with the metal blinds that had come with the place. They ate their meals from plastic dishes. There wasn't a single book, not even a dictionary, in the house.
    Shopping for Billy posed the opposite problem: he already had the things he liked, and what he didn't have, he simply did not want.
    His apartment in New York was decorated in a style he called "minimalist": bare floors and invisible lighting, modern furniture in soft leather, everything in shades of beige. Paulette found it all very handsome, if a bit stark. Once a year he invited her for a weekend visit. He had a sunny guest room with a wonderfully firm mattress. It delighted her, after the theater and an excellent dinner, to fall asleep on her son's beige linen sheets. She wished he would invite her to New York more often. She was not the kind of mother who would invite herself.
    For Christmas she'd bought him books, two cashmere sweaters, an exquisite leather belt. For Gwen, clothes were out of the question: misses sizes had never fit her, and the styles in the girls' department were inappropriate for an adult. Paulette had settled on a necklace and clip earrings (Gwen would not have her ears pierced), a cashmere hat and scarf. Good perfume. A Chanel lipstick in pale pink, the shade discreet enough that Gwen might be willing to try it. She'd searched everywhere for a small leather pocketbook. Shoulder bags were out of the question. The straps were