Orin's B.U. punting and Joelle (pp. 285–286)
Himself, from his own experience, probably thought it’d be better for Orin to get the hell out of Dodge altogether, do something Midwest or PAC, but he kept his own counsel. He never had to struggle not to overstep. He probably figured Orin was a big boy. This was four years and 30-some released entertainments before Himself put his head in a microwave oven, fatally.
Context
Himself's version of paternal restraint is a shrug. He has an opinion (get out of Dodge, the same escape he'd made), holds it, and moves on; the not-overstepping costs him no visible effort because the distance is already total. The narrator files the whole low-key non-intervention next to the microwave, measuring the gap to the suicide in released films rather than in years — the father's absence here is companionable and lethal in the same breath, a man who figures his son is a big boy and is four years and thirty entertainments from proving how little he knew any of them.