Part Eight: Ray
I saw Ray Kowalski once more, about three weeks after it happened.
I was at the same grocery store — Tuesday again, the same unremarkable slice of ordinary life — and I saw him in the parking lot, loading bags into the back of a truck with Maggie beside him, holding one handle of a reusable bag with both hands while he held the other, the two of them carrying it together with enormous seriousness.
Theresa was a few steps behind, talking on her phone.
I stopped walking. I don’t know why. I stood by my car and watched for a moment.
Maggie said something to him — signed something, quickly, pointing at the bag, apparently lodging some complaint about the distribution of weight.
Ray looked at the bag. He looked at her. He made a face of exaggerated consideration, like the question of bag-weight was genuinely one of the great philosophical puzzles. Then he rearranged the contents with mock ceremony, and Maggie watched with her arms crossed, the way a six-year-old supervisor watched work being done to her specifications.
Then she signed something else. He signed back. She laughed.
The laugh was completely silent, the way all her expressions of joy were — her whole face involved, her eyes gone small with it, her shoulders shaking.
Ray was smiling.
He looked up, perhaps sensing someone watching, the way people sometimes did. He met my eyes across the parking lot.
I didn’t know what to do, so I nodded.
He nodded back, once, simple, and then turned back to the bags.
