Just let it go, Portia

“I have experienced a myriad of challenges in my young life, but I am not sorry for myself, because they have had an important affect on me. I know that I am a better person because of the things I have faced. I try to remember that every day.”

This is one of the essay excerpts that are at the beginning of every chapter. This one stuck out because it seems like it might have been chosen for a specific reason—it’s right at the beginning of the chapter, “Teammates,” in which we finally get ( or at least I think we get) some idea of what Portia’s dark secret might be. She freaks out when her mother tells her about the seventeen-year-old pregnant girl she’s taking in and how she is planning that the girl will fall in love with her baby when she sees it and will change her mind about giving it up. This leads the readers to believe that Portia’s admission will be that she had a baby, and probably with the college boyfriend that has been mentioned a couple of times.

Unlike the student who wrote the essay this excerpt came from, Portia has not moved on from this dark moment, whatever it may be, in her past and has not allowed herself to come to terms with it so that it could at least help to make her a stronger person. The student says that he is not sorry for himself, but Portia IS sorry for herself. Portia seems to still be carrying around this heavy burden, and she won’t share it with anybody. Her life is a closed book. She mentions how she doesn’t have any real girlfriends. She has colleagues and acquaintances, but not any friends with whom she can have heart-to-hearts. There is Mark, who is her boyfriend? Partner? I don’t know, but she has lived with him for sixteen years. They seem to be emotionally unattached though. Their relationship seems to be routine and boring, and she hints at being unsatisfied with the relationship. Well she hints in words, but she makes it blatantly obvious with her actions. Yes, I’m talking about the sex scene with the schoolmaster of Quest, John Halsey. Now, if going away on a business trip and having an affair with a teacher isn’t an indicator of problems in a relationship, I don’t know what is. But even though she’s physically intimate with John, she isn’t emotionally intimate with him. She doesn’t really offer him any information about herself at all. All she seems to be willing to talk about is her job, and that little speech is so rehearsed, safe, and overused. She is repetitive because she is only willing to talk about this one thing. Whenever she does talk in the book, the reader is subjected to another one of countless, rambling “Princeton is great” speeches. Gahhh.

Unlike this student who struggled through challenges but eventually overcame them and became a better person because of it, Portia is letting her past challenges set the mood for her life. She hasn’t moved on, and her secret has caused her to put up barriers between herself and others.
She needs to make her admission and soon, because her character is becoming less likeable and more annoying.