And for that matter, had he ever authentically, sincerely, from the metaphorical (and quite likely, mythical) heart, said “Yes” to fatherhood, even before it was reduced to three-point-five-hours on a Friday evening, time spent, yes, pleasantly, but with no particular intensity or earnestness, when the two of them sat, playing a game, tinkering with a model, all the while with Charles having the nagging and incongruously adult feeling that his father was periodically sneaking glances at his watch?  Was there a “yes” to which to run?  A “yes” worth sending his mother into a spiral of depressed withdrawals and tearful conversations in which he wasn’t, in fact, emotionally mature enough to participate?  Was he letting go of a dock that to his eyes was rotted and creaking its last, shedding scraps of wood, only to find himself frantically paddling toward the outline of a ship that was steadily powering away from him?

Had he been the older and more ironically adept version of himself, the tortured nautical metaphor, born as he was staring into the middle distance between his irate 13-year-old self and the actual dock that stretched, non-rotting and very much real, into Lake Damarascotta, would have made him laugh.