Free Sweet Love by Sarah Strohmeyer

if Mom had gone to Arizona to visit her cousin Justine. He moved to Paul’s tiny apartment in New York and made it his mission to make my brother’s life a living hell until Mom’s own hell was in remission.
    To this day I’m convinced that while the nurses, surgeons, radiation, and chemo drugs killed my mother’s rapidly multiplying cancer cells, it was Lois and Teenie who cured her. Had they not been there to hold her hand, to clean her house, and drive her back and forth to radiation, she would not be here hulling strawberries today.
    “How’s the job going, Julie?” Lois asks as I line up sterilized jelly jars on a bleached kitchen towel. “Any new developments?”
    I freeze, my hand clutching the tongs in midair. How does Lois know? I haven’t said a word to Mom, since her idea of keeping a secret is confiding in a close circle of friends. That wouldn’t be a problem except the close circle of friends includes every patron of Mario’s salon and anyone who happens to be standing behind her in the checkout aisle at Shaw’s.
    “The job’s fine,” I say, pulling out another jar from the top of the dishwasher. “Nothing big.”
    “That’s too bad. We were hoping you’d get that national election assignment. Did they give it to the young girl?”
    “Young- er .” Geesh. How come everyone keeps making that mistake? “And, no, I don’t think they’ve made up their minds. Not definitely.” There. I didn’t lie.
    “Well, take heart, Julie. Maybe this TV journalism gig has run its course. There’s nothing wrong with slowing down and becoming a school librarian, you know.”
    The image of me in a long black skirt surrounded by clamoring children sends pains up my arm. “Er, yes. That might be worth looking into.”
    “Summers off and school holidays, too. You could plant a garden. Go to Europe in July. That’s the life.”
    Actually, that could have its appeal, now that I think of it.
    “Okay, we got the fire started,” Em announces, tromping up the back stairs with her friend Nadia—she of big hair and very little brain. “And we did it without lighter fluid because we’re environmentally friendly.”
    “Well, you two are a couple of vestal virgins, aren’t you?” Lois says, turning off the stove.
    Em and Nadia exchange quick looks. “Vestal what ?” Nadia asks.
    “If they still offered Latin, they’d know this,” says Mom.
    “Virgins,” I tell them. “A distant memory for you, I’m sure. Vestal virgins were even more distant, a group of women in ancient Rome considered priests who maintained the fire of the goddess Vesta. Very highly regarded, except if they were found to have had sex. Then they were buried alive.”
    “Harsh,” Nadia says. “When my mom found out I’d had sex, she just took me to the doctor for Norplant.”
    Oh, I wish she hadn’t said that in the presence of my mother.
    Mom frowns and shakes her head. “Call me old-fashioned, but this day and age of friends with benefits is cheating you girls out of real love. Boys are growing up into men who don’t respect women, and girls are growing up into women who don’t respect themselves. And I thought it was bad when Julie was coming of age. Heck, this generation’s three times worse.”
    Here it comes, I think, removing another jar, a tirade against the “MTV generation.”
    “It’s MTV, that’s the real culprit here,” says Lois, going to the sink to wash her mannish hands. “I’ve only seen it once or twice, but what I’ve seen turns my stomach. All that bump and grind and half-naked dancing. It’s so demeaning .”
    Shaking a paring knife at Em, Mom says, “I was strict with your mother, stricter than she is with you when it comes to sex. And thanks be to God. Who knows what trouble she could have gotten into if I hadn’t seen to it that certain temptations did not present themselves.”
    She’s referring to Michael, of course. How did we get on this touchy subject, anyway? “That fire’s not