My Arbitrary Valentine

By Roger Rosenblatt

I was about to sing to you You Were Meant For Me for Valentine's Day--you remember that sentimental old song--when I came across this passage in Alice McDermott's novel Charming Billy, where the narrator hypothesizes that her father might not be her father if her mother's first fiance hadn't been kept so long overseas in the Navy, thus giving her dad his chance with her. Here's what McDermott has to say about that: "Those of us who claim exclusivity in love do so with a liar's courage: there are a hundred opportunities, thousands over the years, for a sense of falsehood to seep in, for all that we imagine as inevitable to become arbitrary, for our history together to reveal itself as only a matter of chance and happenstance, nothing irrepeatable or irreplaceable, the circumstantial mingling of just one of the so many millions with just one more."

Do you suppose she's right? Chaos theory is pretty hard to take as it is, let alone on Valentine's Day, when exclusivity in love is what's at stake. Won't you be my Valentine? My irrepeatable, irreplaceable Valentine? Surely the implication of the day is that you were meant for me, I was meant for you. That movie Sliding Doors. What was that all about if not that the right she was destined to meet the right he?

Yet the scientist--or the gambler--in us has to admit that there is something in what McDermott says. Falling in love can seem fairly random, involving routines that could be applied to anyone: stares, smiles, witty remarks, revealing remarks, endearing remarks, hands touch, lips touch. We know the drill. Bow to your partner, curtsy to your corner. Suddenly your corner becomes your partner. Are the stars out tonight? I only have eyes for you. Or is it you?

It could be that we invent the fated-lovers theme as a protection against the discovery that we could hitch up with one of a hundred or a thousand others in a lifetime of circumstantial mingling and not know the difference. Worse, that we might not care. Men (pathetic romantics that we are) tend to dream up no fewer than half a dozen one-and-onlies in a day:

I stand at the deli counter, ordering a roast beef on rye with lettuce from a knockout waitress who looks as if she comes from India. She slices the roast beef and reaches for the lettuce. My arm brushes against her wrist. We fix each other in a longing gaze. The lights in the deli go out, and then, in the sweaty summer evening, with the red neon pastrami sign flashing in the window, we roll around on the checkered linoleum among the containers of cole slaw and potato salad with chives. In the morning we run off together to set up a new deli in New Delhi. That's the way men "think." What we say is, "No mayo, please."

Still, even with men, there is the conviction that "we were meant for each other." For women it's the same old songs. "Two for tea, and you for me, alone." If we did not believe that, people would be like any other animals, spreading our feathers like the cock of the rock and waiting for the nearest, who becomes the dearest. Would any bird really do? If Romeo had turned his head at the moment Juliet passed by, would another girl have turned his head just as easily? It is the east, and Hildegarde is the sun.

Liar's courage aside, certain couples do seem destined. It is difficult to imagine substitute partners for Fred and Ginger, Rhett and Scarlett, Roy and Dale. Would a benevolent fate have tossed together George and Dale? Roy and Gracie? I have a hard time picturing Bonnie and Ozzie. There's a wizened couple who travel in New York semi-literary circles who are both so poisonous, it is impossible to believe the gods would have allowed them to infect two others.

Of course, a lot of this faith in destiny is pure egotism. To think that you and I were uniquely fated suggests that we were especially deserving of celestial attention. I can see how that would be true for you, but not for me...unless you were selected for my improvement--sort of heavenly social work. No considerate deity would have allowed just anyone to be stuck with me. It had to be you.

But say McDermott is right, and you and I represent the commingling of just one of the so many millions with just one more. Who cares? If we have commingled by the dumbest luck, I'll take it. Anyway, how does anyone know that luck isn't another name for fate, that the arbitrary isn't inevitable, and that the appearance of chance and happenstance aren't simply heaven's way of amusing itself? As far as I'm concerned, babe, "I'm content./ The angels must have sent you,/and they meant you just for me."