Chapter 12: The Disclosure Problem

Marcus's sister called on Thursday afternoon, which was statistically unusual.

Rachel called on Sundays. She called on birthdays. She called when she needed help with their mother's Wi-Fi password, which happened approximately every six months because their mother wrote it down and immediately lost the paper. She did not call on Thursdays at two-fifteen in the afternoon, and she certainly did not call with the kind of alertness in her voice that suggested she had already decided something before dialing.

"You're seeing someone," she said, before Marcus could finish saying hello.

He was at his desk. His laptop screen showed a half-finished email and a graph that had stopped making sense three minutes ago. Through the window, Wren was visible in her kitchen, sorting dried herbs into small glass jars with the focused precision of a person conducting a private ceremony. She had been there for an hour. Marcus had accomplished very little in that hour.

"I'm not—" he started.

"You absolutely are. Your voice goes up at the ends of sentences when you're happy. It's disgusting. Mom noticed too, by the way."

"Mom noticed my sentence inflection?"

"Mom noticed that you stopped complaining about your neighbor."

Marcus pinched the bridge of his nose. "The neighbor situation has improved."

"The neighbor situation." Rachel made a sound that was not quite a laugh. "Marcus, you spent six weeks updating a spreadsheet about her. You told me about the spreadsheet. You were very proud of the spreadsheet."

"I was not proud. I was documenting."

"You color-coded it."

"Color-coding is a standard organizational practice."

There was a pause on the other end of the line, the kind of pause Rachel used when she was preparing to change tactics. Marcus knew this pause well. It had preceded every significant conversation they'd had since she was twelve and he was fifteen and she had figured out that their parents' marriage was ending before he had.

"I'm not trying to interrogate you," she said.

"That's exactly what you're doing."

"Fine. I'm interrogating you. But nicely. I want to know who she is."

Marcus looked out the window. Wren had moved from the counter to the sink. She was filling a kettle with water, her back to him, and he could see the line of her shoulder blades through the thin fabric of her shirt. She had stayed up until three in the morning the night before, working on something for a client, and she had fallen asleep against his chest while they were watching a documentary about fungi. He had not moved for forty-five minutes because her breathing had evened out and he had not wanted to disturb it.

"Her name is Wren," he said.

"Wren," Rachel repeated, as if testing the shape of it. "That's pretty. Is she pretty?"

"Rachel."

"I'm asking as your sister. I'm allowed. Is she pretty?"

"She's..." Marcus searched for a word that would satisfy Rachel without exposing anything important. "She's interesting."

"Interesting. Marcus, you once described a date as 'a statistically unremarkable evening with above-average appetizers.' 'Interesting' from you is the equivalent of 'she's a supermodel who saved my life.'"

"That's not true."

"It absolutely is. What does she do?"

This was where the conversation became difficult. Marcus had known it would become difficult the moment Rachel said hello. He had spent the last two weeks avoiding this call precisely because he did not know how to answer the question "What does Wren do?" in a way that would not make him sound either insane or evasive.

"She runs a consulting business," he said carefully.

"What kind of consulting?"

"Personal. Individual. She works with clients one-on-one."

"Like a therapist?"

"No."

"Like a life coach?"

"No."

"Marcus."

"She's a—" He stopped. The word sat on his tongue like a stone. He could not say witch. He had seen Wren reassemble a glass with a single word and he still could not say witch to his sister without feeling like he was auditioning for a role in a movie neither of them would watch.

"She's an herbalist," he said.

There was a silence. Then Rachel said, "An herbalist."

"Yes."

"Like, she grows basil."

"She grows many things."

"And you fell in love with someone who grows basil."

"I didn't say I was in love with her."

"Marcus." Rachel's voice dropped into the register she used when she was trying very hard not to laugh. "You said she was interesting. You don't say people are interesting. You say data is interesting. You once told me your high school girlfriend was 'a person with whom I shared several measurable social experiences.'"

"That was an accurate description."

"It was the least romantic thing I've ever heard. And yet here you are, unable to describe what your new girlfriend does for a living without sounding like you're trying to sell me a timeshare in Vermont."

Marcus rubbed his forehead. "She's not my girlfriend."

"What is she then?"

He looked out the window again. Wren had turned around. She was holding the kettle and looking directly at him, as if she had felt his attention the way she sometimes seemed to feel things before they happened. She smiled. It was a small smile, private, the kind that made his chest feel too full. He raised his hand in a slight wave. She raised the kettle in response, an absurd little salute, and then turned back to the stove.

"I don't know what she is," Marcus said quietly.

Rachel's voice softened. "That scares you, doesn't it?"

"Yes."

"Good."

"Good?"

"Yes. You need to be scared by something that isn't a spreadsheet. You've been very careful for a very long time, and careful is fine, but it's not the same as alive." Rachel paused. "So she's an herbalist. Or whatever. Is she kind to you?"

Marcus thought about the way Wren had made him toast that morning. He thought about her leaving a sprig of rosemary on his laptop when she thought he was working too hard. He thought about her reading his threads and saying the one true thing he had never told anyone, and then waiting for him to decide what to do with it.

"Yes," he said.

"Does she make you less of a robot?"

"Marginally."

"I'll take it." Rachel was smiling now; he could hear it. "I want to meet her."

"No."

"Marcus."

"Absolutely not. Not yet. Possibly never."

"You're being dramatic."

"I'm being protective."

"Of her or of yourself?"

Marcus opened his mouth to answer and found he didn't have one. The question was sharper than Rachel probably knew. He was protective of Wren because her world was not designed for people like Rachel, people who asked reasonable questions and expected reasonable answers. He was also protective of himself because he did not know how to stand in the space between Wren's truth and Rachel's skepticism without losing his balance.

"Both," he admitted.

"Okay." Rachel accepted this with surprising ease. "Then I'll wait. But I'm telling Mom you're alive and possibly in love, and she's going to cry, so prepare yourself."

"Rachel—"

"Love you. Bye."

She hung up.

Marcus set his phone down and stared at it for a long moment. Then he stood up and walked to the window. Wren was at the stove now, stirring something in a small copper pot. The smell of it had not reached his apartment, but he imagined it anyway—something herbal and warm, something that smelled like her.

His laptop chimed. An email from his colleague, David, with the subject line "Status on the Brooklyn dataset?" Marcus ignored it.