I’ve been hearing my name in the news, lately — my last name. Unfortunately, it is not for anything praiseworthy I have done, but for something quite the opposite done by somebody else.
Let me state right here and now that I am NOT related to Jeffrey Epstein, who is described on Wikipedia as a “financier, philanthropist and registered sex offender.”
I am certain we are not related — well, as certain as I can be, short of appearing on “Finding Your Roots” with Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and having him trace my family tree.
Names are important. When I got married, I elected to keep my maiden name — or, as I preferred to call it, “my name.” Whenever anyone (usually men) asked me why my last name differed from my husband’s, I explained: “He didn’t want to change his.”
When anyone pressed me further, I gave them the rest of the answer: When I was a little girl, I promised myself that someday Judy Epstein would be a published writer. I had to be able to keep that promise.
That decision ended up giving my children a certain amount of plausible deniability when I wrote about them. If one of their classmates ever asked them, “Say, is that your mother who never gets rid of the clutter?” my children could always say, “Of course not! We don’t even have the same last name.”
But even the most carefully contrived arrangement can backfire. One year I agreed to speak at my son’s middle school Career Day about being a writer.
According to the terms of an excruciatingly complicated treaty, I could speak to any English class in the building, as long as it wasn’t his own.
That morning, the teacher ran into another boy in his year — a boy whose last name happened to be Epstein. “Your mom is coming up to school this morning,” he announced.
Horror stricken, the boy replied, “Why? What did I do?”
“You didn’t do anything. It’s because she’s a writer.”
“But she isn’t!”
The teacher finally figured out that the boy with my name was not my boy; my boy had a different last name.
There seem to be a lot of Epsteins around these days to whom I am not related. But there were not so many back when — and where — I was growing up.
For example, I am not related to Brian Epstein, English-born manager of the Beatles. But I was nevertheless grateful for his arrival on the scene when the Beatles came to America. Finally, my name was not entirely strange to my teachers and classmates in Silver Spring, Md.
I was even more grateful — as were my brothers — when Mike Epstein, the baseball player, joined the Washington Senators in May 1967. At last, a sports figure with our last name! And he was good news for the entire area. In his first at-bat against his former team, the Baltimore Orioles, he hit a grand slam home run. He was clear about being an Epstein, and clear about being a Jew, and finally people could pronounce my last name the way I do (EP-steen).
By the time I got to college, there were several more Epsteins to discuss. People would ask, “Say, are you related to Jacob Epstein, the sculptor?”
“No.”
“Jason Epstein, the editor and publisher?”
“Wouldn’t that be useful? But no.”
“Well, what about your half of that virus — you know…Epstein-something?”
“Epstein-Barr? Again, no.”
Finally, in self-defense, I developed a way to cut short the interrogations. “I can save us both a lot of time,” I would say. “I’m not related to any Epstein you’ve ever heard of.”
“Good!” exclaimed a boy I’d just met. “Because there’s this son of a bitch who runs the Nassau County Motor Vehicles Department!”
“Oh. That’s my Uncle Larry.”
Sure enough, my new acquaintance had received a ticket the previous summer, which I’m sure he deserved, and my Uncle Lawrence Epstein’s name had been all over the paperwork.
I’ve never been prouder.
