THE NAMESAKE

The internet is a funny and amazing thing. Last year, fooling around on one of those that finds people, I typed in my own name, and discovered the existence of another Jamie Malanowski. I found this surprising, since Malanowski is not a particularly common name; my father was one of ten sons, and so far as I could tell growing up, apart from dad and his brothers and one cousin, there were no other Malanowskis in Baltimore. In the later years, when I do come across the name, it’s usually spelled Malinowski, which is the spelling people expect, perhaps through exposure to the sociologist Bronislaw Malinowski.

In an event, there was this other Jamie Malanowski, except that this one was a girl. But to add to the coincidence, she lived in Baltimore, where I grew up. I looked her up on MySpace. She was in her twenties, and pretty; her page reflected the usual enthusiasms of a young person, bands and TV shows and so on. Her pride was her two little boys, whom she wrote enthusiastically, with stars and exclamation points. But I definitely got a vibe that things weren’t all great in her part of the world. There was nothing about college, or a career, or a husband. I thought of contacting her–“Hey, you might think you’re Jamie Malanowski, but guess what? I’m Jamie Malanowski!”–but te idea of a 57 year-old man contacting a stranger thirty years younger seemed inappropriate and a little creepy, so I resisted. But for a moment it was fun to imagine her alternate universe.

Yesterday came the grim and upsetting news that in Erie, Pennsylvania, Jamie Malanowski, a 28 year-old native of Maryland and mother of two, was murdered, along with her two sons. They were shot by the boys’ father, who then turned the gun on himself.

Suddenly, as though reflected in a broken mirror, is the jagged edge of a life that could have not been going all that well, and I have felt sad about it all day. I don’t know what difference I could have made, but I’m sorry I didn’t write.