“What story?” Leora asked. In truth, she was just relieved that there was something for the two of them to talk about other than a dead man in the nursing home. But that was her mistake.

Mr. Rosenthal, as Jason explained it, was a very old man—old even for a nursing home, though no one seemed able to tell quite how old he was. Nor was Mr. Rosenthal himself a particularly reliable source for that kind of information, since Mr. Rosenthal was, as Jason put it, “a little out of it.” He could express logical thoughts, but by the time Jason began visiting him, he was having trouble recognizing people, even people like Jason whom he saw every single day. One day about a month ago, Jason walked into his room just as he did every day, sat down, and said hello. But instead of greeting Jason as he usually did, Mr. Rosenthal looked at Jason as if someone had turned on a new switch in his brain. He propped himself up a bit in his bed, smiled a giant smile, and said, with his heavy Yiddish accent, “Good morning, Marcus! Why have you not earlier come to visit?”

It took Jason some time, but soon he realized that Mr. Rosenthal thought he was his grandson, or maybe even his great-grandson, a young man named Marcus who, according to the nurses on the hall, hadn’t been back to visit ever since he had had a tremendous screaming fight with Mr. Rosenthal three years earlier, the subject of which no one on the staff could remember. But Mr. Rosenthal seemed to have forgotten about all that by now. No matter how many times Jason tried to correct him, according to Mr. Rosenthal he was Marcus, and Mr. Rosenthal had never been happier to see him. After a while Jason started playing along.

“So, Marcus, how are you these days?” Mr. Rosenthal asked. “You are still playing all those sports and games?” The real Marcus, apparently, was just as athletic as Jason was. Unwilling to guess at the real Marcus’s activities, Jason answered that he was still playing soccer, and in fact had been made assistant varsity captain for next year’s soccer season.

Jason had thought this sort of thing would please Mr. Rosenthal. Most people in the nursing home, Jason had found, loved nothing more than to be given something to brag about concerning their descendants. But Mr. Rosenthal surprised him. Instead of grinning and congratulating him, Mr. Rosenthal suddenly sprang all the way up in bed in a near fury, grabbing Jason by the arm with his shaky, thin hand and refusing to let go. His smile had vanished. “Marcus, listen to me,” he said in a tone of utmost urgency. “I want you to be a deep-sea diver.”

Jason sat there, not stunned. He had seen a lot of things like this in his years at the nursing home, and he knew the best way to handle it was to take it for what it was. “Sure, I’ll consider it,” Jason said, taking Mr. Rosenthal’s other hand in his, gently, kindly.