Relentless

Boom—born Nancy, maiden name Farnham—was an Amazon: six feet three, broad shoulders, full bosom, strong arms, a spine as straight as a plumb line. Her thick mane of midnight hair, without a touch of gray, usually lay in intricate braids down her back, but now hung loose, great black curtains billowing around a striking face surprisingly beautiful considering that her features were bold enough for an Eskimo totem pole or the prow of a Viking longboat.
    She wore laced boots that probably went to her knees, a long skirt of coarse gray material, a belt with a fang-bared serpent’s head for a buckle, a man’s blue denim shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and a silver pendant, an amulet in which she kept a lock of hair from the mane of a horse that had trampled to death a man who had tried but failed to rape her when she was fourteen.
    Turning away from the stove, her face bright with sweat and with happiness at the sight of us, Clotilda said, “I
knew
you would come tonight when I saw the strange vein patterns in one of the basil leaves I put in the soup this afternoon.”
    I’ve known Clotilda for a decade, yet I can’t say with certitude if her claim to the perceptions of a Gypsy seer is serious or tongue-in-cheek. Penny, who has known her mother longer than she has known
anyone
, is likewise unsure, which argues that Clo is playing a sly game, testing our gullibility, tolerance, and commitment to reason.
    The name Clotilda comes from the Old German word that means “renowned in battle.”
    Clo threw her arms around Penny, lifted her off the floor, and kissed her two, three, four times. “Punkin’, you’re a slip of a thing, you aren’t eating, you’re going to wither away.”
    “I eat well, Mom,” Penny assured her, waiting to be put down.
    “You’ve gone off meat!” Clo declared. “Oh, girl, you’ve become a grazer!”
    “No, Mom. I could never do that.”
    “Vegetarianism kills,” Clo warned. “Your vital organs shrivel, your brain dims. Look in a mirror at your teeth. You have central incisors, lateral incisors, canines—all for the purpose of chewing meat. Vegetarianism is unnatural, it’s not right, it’s
creepy
.”
    “I eat plenty of meat,” Penny assured her. “I eat it every chance I get. I
live
for meat.”
    “Eating it often isn’t enough if you’re eating small portions,” Clo said, finally returning my wife to her feet.
    Sometimes I find it hard to believe that Grimbald and Clotilda produced a daughter as petite, lithe, and comparatively demure as Penny. Two of the three proofs that she is their offspring—her hair as black as Clotilda’s, her blue eyes the same shade as Grimbald’s—do not convince. For me, the case is made by the fact that, in spite of her size, Penny is as tough and just as indomitable as the Booms.
    Clotilda came to me as if she were a Valkyrie swooping down on a dying warrior to take possession of his soul, and I half feared she would sweep me off the floor and hold me in the crook of her arm.
    She kissed my cheek. “Seeing you lifts my heart, Hildebrand.”
    “Likewise, Nancy.”
    “Ah, yes, yes, I forgot—you prefer Cubby.”
    “Since it’s my name. You look wonderful, Clotilda.”
    “Every night before going to bed, I put a small silk bag full of thyme leaves under my pillow. You look very fit yourself.”
    To please her and forestall a lecture, I said, “I ate the better part of a cow last month.”
    “There is no
lesser
part of a cow. They are entirely delicious.”
    Turning from me, she descended upon Milo and clasped his head with both hands. Speaking in Gaelic between kisses, she smooched his brow, his eyes, his nose, his cheeks, each corner of his mouth, his chin. I believe it was some kind of blessing.
    Next she plucked Lassie from the boy’s embrace. Holding the dog at arm’s length, laughing with delight, she turned rapidly in circles, her skirt flaring.
    Were I to do anything of that kind, Lassie would either whimper with fear or bare her teeth and growl me to a stop. In Clotilda’s hands, she grinned not with anxiety but with obvious pleasure, and her tail wagged, wagged, wagged.
    Put on the floor, the dog tottered dizzily, but Clo remained in full control of herself and rushed back to the woodstove to tend to her cooking before anything burned.
    “You’ll stay for dinner,” Grimbald declared.
    Before we could reply, Clo said, “They already had dinner. I saw it in the basil leaf.”
    “Then while we’re having