Hope Was the Worst Part
“That was what hope did to him. It made him choose someone else's car over his own wheels.” The bike with the rusted chain — “independence that required no favors from anyone” — stays in the entryway, and Simon walks to the Maple corner, to someone else’s car. “That was what hope did to him.” Without it he knew how to live: years of training, “not a single unnecessary expectation.” Hope turned out to be new and unbearable because it demanded that he look, wait, be seen — everything no one had ever taught him, and everything he had been beaten for in his life.
It is a paradox familiar to everyone who grew up in deprivation: despair is a habitual and, in its own way, safe environment, while hope is a risk. It opens access to a pain the person had been shielded from for years by expecting the worst. That is why the first disappointment is lived not as “it didn’t work out” but as confirmation: I should not have wanted it. Note how quickly Simon will return to the old safety switch — “turn off hope, turn off the face.” This is not weakness but a reflex that kept him safe for twenty years.
