Here is a photo from last month’s beach trip. It features my dear father-in-law and his two sons Whom I Did Not marry. Jeff is in the middle, and the rest of his shirt says “with a body like this?” And Ray is on the left.
Jeff used to live with us. In fact, he lived with us from early September 2002 until late August 2003, and I don’t think I have ever laughed harder or more consistently than I did during those months. Jeff is Very Funny.
Bill, the father-in-law, comes around from time to time. His visits may be infrequent and brief, but he and my step-mother-in-law have seven children between them with (almost) inumerable grandchildren, so their time is spread thin. We simply relish the visits we get and make it our business to visit them, too. Nonetheless, when Bill and Carolyn are around, they invariably have the opportunity to meet some of our friends, and so their existence is Confirmed Reality (not to mention the small detail of Bill Sr. being my husband’s father).
But Ray’s visits… well. He comes with a widespread regularity, and we always enjoy having him here. He doesn’t stay with us these days, though; instead, he stays at his mother’s house, which is walking distance from ours. And generally, when he comes, he’s here for a weekend and not much longer. So we don’t see as much of him.
All of that to say that Some Of My Friends don’t believe in him. “Oh sure,” they say, “the other brother. The imaginary brother.” As if, with six brothers-in-law on my husband’s side, I need to have an imaginary one to boot.
So, when this photo showed up among our June beach pictures, I gleefully sent it out as Proof. Look. Here. See. Here is Ray, Bill’s older brother. Proof positive that he exists.
Not quite.
Here, for your reading pleasure, is Another possibility for the identity of the Gentleman On The Left. Kindly recall, O Reader, that the photo above was taken at a gathering of the Stevenson-Boland family, a clan that includes 11 and a half grandchildren, four of whom are identical twins.
“Yah yah yah .. there is a picture of a man who does at least somewhat resemble the two Stevenson men whom I actually have touched and know to be real. But he could be anyone, as you say. He could be the landlord, or a guy whose beach umbrella just got stove in by a Stevenson clan’s kite, coming looking for justice or money or some combination thereof.
“In fact, let’s invent facts about the mystery man: I think he drives a Chinese food delivery car except on Mondays when he hands out brochures on the dangers of food-borne illnesses at a local mall. He has a wife and 5 children with twins on the way, and his slightly worried expression comes from looking at the two! sets! of twins in his line of view. He’s Irish-American, has a startlingly lovely tenor voice, and sings hymns in the car while he drives from delivery to delivery. His mother-in-law is planning an extended visit when the twins are born, and his interest in food-borne illnesses has some basis in this fact.
“Or, he could be Ray.”
I could tell you the Real Facts about Ray, but for now, I’ll let this story stand. I think it’s wildly funny and, frankly, the fiction just might be stranger than the truth in this case. 
