It was hard to ignore, this little seahorse-size thing swimming behind her taut abs, threatening to grow into a monster that would make her belly swell. Ruining eight year’s work toward playing in the Women’s World Cup of Soccer.

Cecily jogged past the rows of untrimmed rose bushes in the front yard, jumped the steps and knocked on the lime green door.

“Happy ninetieth, Nana,” she said, reaching forward to kiss the powdery soft wrinkled cheek. “Sorry I’m late.”

“Oh God what’s late at my age? If I’m not dead than you’re right on time.”

“Tell that to my mother,” Cecily whispered.

“Hell no—I didn’t get to ninety by arguing with your mother,” Nana Helen whispered. “But watch out, I’m saving it all up for when I need that purple pill.”

Cecily gave her an aggravated smirk, both at the mention of the purple pill and what the remark would have cost if her mother had heard it. But Nana Helen had been her ally so long, even in the low points of her battles with her mother, that she only said, “Right on, Nana,” and put her arm across the increasingly thin shoulders. She was careful to moderate her own strength as she squeezed the shoulders, because the old bird had already broken and healed both shoulder blades and both wrists.

Nana’s house was usually dim and quiet, a shrine to all her glass figurines, but today the living room was full of women and the plush brown carpeting was already littered with bits of thread and fabric. Her mother hadn’t mentioned anything about quilting when she’d insisted Cecily attend this birthday party, but of course she knew her daughter would have worked harder to beg off if she had.

Now all these women she hadn’t seen in years were standing to gush at her. Four of them were her mother’s cousins from Worcester, then there was Aunt Berta, Great Aunt Sue, her mother’s friend Patty Johnson and some others she was pretty sure she’d never seen before.

“You’re so fit! Isn’t she fit?”

“It’s remarkable, do you ever eat?”

“Of course she eats. What do you think they feed her—nothing but vitamin water?”

“What’s it like to play for the national team? How much free stuff do they give you?”

“Oh what I wouldn’t give to travel all over like you do!”

“Do you know how proud you’ve made your mother?”

Cecily had to laugh. It was like a press conference after a game except with all old lady questions. Too bad Mario wasn’t here, he’d have found it funny. But of course he liked old ladies better than she did.

Mario was like that, finding something good in everyone. Even in her mother, who still called him “that spic Cecily’s seeing.” It wasn’t right that she hadn’t told Mario about the little seahorse in her belly. But how could she tell him when she didn’t yet know how to think about it? Especially knowing exactly what he’d think, even if he didn’t say it. He’d want the monster to be born and he’d want to be a dad to it.

But of course it wasn’t his contract that would get broken. He’d still be able to play the whole season. Maybe he’d miss one game at the most. She’d miss not only the season but be cut from the team that had just qualified for the World Cup. It would be four more years before she could even try again and she was already pushing thirty. And what would having a baby do to her fitness? Nothing good, that was for certain.

Her mother finally pushed through the crowd to grab her arm and say, “You made it!”

“Ma, I’m not quilting,” Cecily told her.

“Of course not,” her mother said, managing to impart just the perfect pale tinge of judgment that left no doubt what she really thought. “They all wanted to see you so I said to bring their quilting. What’s it matter?”

“It doesn’t, only . . .”

“What?”

“I wanted to talk to Nana.”

“So? Talk to Nana. Who’s stopping you?”

Cecily felt a hand on her other arm and looked down to see her grandmother’s spidery grip. “Come, dear, I’ve got coffee in the kitchen. I want to hear all about your escapades. Especially the ones with the sexy men. I’ve got my eye on that Mario of yours. He’s just my type. I watched those cute buns in the game last week. So squeezable. Do you squeeze them well enough?”

“You like him, Nana? I’ll give him to you. For your birthday,” Cecily said as she followed her grandmother into the kitchen, which looked exactly the same as when it was last remodeled in 1953. The speckled turquoise vinyl countertops were the same, the alternating dark blue and light blue tiles on the floor, the starched blue-flowered curtain hanging over the sink, the little blue glass cats that decorated the shelves and the dozens of little plaques and magnets with cute sayings about how no one should expect any cooking here. The proof of this being that the burners of her electric stove, long out of use, had become little platforms for antique toasters and antique cracker tins. Nana Helen was fond of saying she’d have starved years ago without her microwave.

“Oh no, dear, I couldn’t do that,” her nana was saying, “That young punk would never be able to keep up with me. Of course, in truth the mind is willing, but the body... not so much.”

Nana Helen poured the instant coffee and sat across the table in her wide turquoise vinyl seat. These days the seat sported a pair of stained pillows that conformed to the shape of her butt, now widened by adult diapers. From her seat she could reach everything she ever needed: her reading glasses, the remote for the small TV in the corner, the smeary ipad for playing solitaire, the small jar of pens for doing the crossword and the painted ceramic figure of a voluptuous woman that opened just under the breasts to reveal a cache of dark chocolate kisses.

“So you think maybe he could keep up with you now?”

“Ah well, perhaps—but only just. Youth is wasted on the likes of you.”

“You’ve been saying that since I was tiny, Nana.” Cecily looked around the kitchen that looked exactly the same as it had in her first memories of it, when she was crawling across the blue-on-blue vinyl floor pretending to be a dog, lapping water from the dog’s bowl.

“Now then,” her grandmother tried on two pairs of glasses before settling on a pair that let her study Cecily’s face, “enough of all that. Tell me your news. How are things really?”

From the living room there was a bark of laughter that was echoed and then subsided. Cecily could hear snatches of the talk, including several references to grandchildren. She knew the aunts and cousins were always asking her mother when Cecily was going to give her a grandchild. It was getting late already. Her mother didn’t ask directly, but it was all the time there, beneath the most innocent question.

Cecily turned back to Nana Helen and said, “Whatever I do isn’t good enough for her. She’s proud that I’m playing at this level, but she also wants a lapful of grandchildren. Doesn’t she know they don’t go together?”

Nana raised a bony shoulder briefly. “It’s not her life. It’s yours. What do you want?”

Cecily was sick to death of this question. It was the same she’d been asking herself for weeks. “I don’t know what I want,” she told her grandmother. “I only know what I don’t want. I don’t want to have regrets that I gave up. That I didn’t give it my best shot.”

Nana Helen couldn’t possibly understand what she meant, not exactly, but she jumped in with advice anyhow.

“Don’t let them make you,” Nana said in a fierce hiss, her lips lined with a thin band of dark chocolate. “The world has enough babies in it and not enough great players.”

She can’t have guessed about the seahorse, can she?

“That Mario will wait for you,” her grandmother said with confidence, “if he’s half as good as he thinks he is.”

Will he? Or will he get sick of waiting. And what if I give this one up and then I can’t have another? That’s what happened to Cindy Parrish. And then her husband left her because she became such a bitch. That could happen.

“We all die alone.” Nana Helen said conversationally, as if Cecily had spoken aloud. “It’s not regrets you want for company when you’re ninety like me.”

Except whatever I do I’ll probably regret.

Nana Helen got that wicked look in her eye again. “You know, dear, there’s no need to worry, really—because it’s amazing what kind of men start looking sexy when you get as old as me. Did I tell you how I propositioned the cable guy?”

“Yes, Nana, you told me on the phone. But tell me again.”

And then tell me how to become an old lady who’s wildly delighted to proposition the cable guy.