Snickerdoodles and Eternity
an excerpt

Denise loved her new house nestled at the foot of the Sierra Nevada mountains. She grew up in Hollywood, attending school with the children of many famous celebrities. Since her dad worked in set design and not acting she was often teased by her classmates about being one of the “common” students. Set designers didn't make much money in those days so her family lived in a small clapboard house that provided the necessities of life but no status. Denise would often stand on the sidewalk in front of her classmate's house as twilight descended, committing every window to memory, absorbing the details in architecture. When she grew up she would have a house like this or better. She was not going to be poor for the rest of her life. One late afternoon, she took a drawing pad, a piece of charcoal and her study pillow to the back porch where she propped herself up against the railing. For the next hour she carefully sketched a sprawling split level with nine rooms. Each room was painstakingly planned. One was a small sewing nook with an old Singer. It was not one of the machines that stitched dozens of different ways, but one that still came in a heavy table with a foot pedal that occasionally slid across the wooden floor and the only special equipment with it was a button hole foot. Another room was a three season porch where bamboo furniture was covered with old pads with a rain forest theme. It was nearly impossible to sit in this room without battling a philodendron or being poked by a huge fig tree. This would be Denise's refuge against the storms of life.
In this drawing she included a dark shadowy figure that would be her husband and two children. One boy, one girl, both blue-eyed blonds like their mother.
When she was finished with the drawing late that night as the moon pulled itself up into the peaks of the sky, she took it with her to her bedroom and placed it in a folder where she could easily pull it out daily to consider it. For the next twenty years she looked at that drawing often. When Denise was diagnosed with Lupus she nearly destroyed it. However, her father encouraged her to hang on to that dream even more tightly as she struggled with treatments that were sometimes worse than the disease.
The day the doctors told her they could not save her life, she sat in a corner of her apartment staring at the map for several hours. She made no effort to destroy it; instead, she allowed the fat heavy tears that slowly inched their way down her cheeks to fall on the aging paper. The marks left from that deep, soul cleansing cry remained on the paper until the day after her death when her husband destroyed it during his own crying session.
Two years after the doctors told her she would not live to see old age and one year before she met the other half of her spirit, Denise and her husband built the house exactly as she envisioned it. However, she had long since decided children were not in the cards so the two small blond, blue-eyed figures were replaced by nine rowdy, affectionate dogs and six cats. She still occasionally wept over the absence of children, but understood that the possibility they might end up with the same illnesses was simply not worth the risk. After all, look at her own history.
Denise was intended to be one of a large happy family brought up by two loving parents. At least, that's what her parents intended. Her mother, Vanessa, had been ill a good part of her life, but there was never any medical explanation for it. She spent most of her adolescence sleeping and then her early twenties in and out of emergency rooms.
Vanessa married the man of her dreams. While Denise's father, David, was not rich, he was stable, loving and wanted a large family as much as Vanessa. He had a good job. It would never provide them with the same material excesses as their neighbors, but they were never a couple who particularly cared for more than what they needed. It concerned them that Vanessa was ill so much of the time but the doctors they consulted all said the same thing. Vanessa, as a woman, simply needed some extra love and support. They encouraged David to romance her more and they were very generous with the Valium prescriptions. Vanessa never told David or the doctors, but she flushed the drugs every month. She lived much of her life with the vague feeling that there was something very wrong but because she was a woman, no one would ever expend much effort to discover what it was.
Vanessa and David were very excited when they discovered she was pregnant with their first child. By the fourth month they already had the nursery decorated and were stockpiling maternity clothes. When Vanessa miscarried half way through the fourth month, they spent some time crying, then began, again, trying. Next time, they told each other, we simply will not prepare as early. They say if we can get through the fifth month we'll be okay.
Over the next twenty years Vanessa carried eleven children in her womb. Some made it to term only to succumb within the first few days. Most simply slipped quietly away shortly after it was determined she was pregnant. Only Denise survived.
By the time Denise reached her third birthday, Vanessa and David decided it was time to let go and pursued adoption. The process was so arduous they gave up after finally obtaining a two year old boy. Much of the trouble with the adoption had centered around Vanessa's health and the medical claim that it was psychosomatic.
When Denise turned eleven, her mother was diagnosed with a rare form of blood cancer. Over the next sixth months, while watching her mother slowly slip away, Denise took over the running of the household. She discovered that her father and brother were demanding and difficult. Once the mourning had subsided some, her father realized he had been too hard on his daughter and asked for her to forgive him. Her brother, however, simply became worse and much of their adolescence was spent in bailing him out of one problem after another. In a burst of anger, Denise informed him that “she wished they could just give him back to the orphanage.” Only afterwards did she discover that Rob had never been told he was adopted. Rather than straighten him out, the news only reinforced his feelings of loneliness and loss. By the time he was sixteen, he was a full blown alcoholic.
During Denise's sophomore year in high school she was attending a school dance when her knee gave out and she fell. The next day she was too sick to get out of bed and her father recognized they were dealing with the same problems her mother suffered. He knew they were not psychosomatic, but he wondered if it was even worth consulting anyone on the issue.
As it turned out, the doctors told Denise the same things they told her mother. Only, now psychotherapy was popular so they often shipped her off to one of the psychiatrists for an exam. As she said, years later, when you are a woman, there seems to be no shortage of diagnoses available in the DSM. Even if some of them were so far off as to be laughable.
At the age of sixteen, Denise decided she was not going to go down gently and if her life was going to be short, she intended to enjoy it while she could. She quit high school to run off with one of the “bad” boys from LA. It was 1968 and the Hippie Revolution fit her perfectly. She felt so at home in the long skirts, tie-dyed shirts and sandals that she was still wearing them many years later.
One afternoon she had a huge fight with her boyfriend. He was abusive and she had been born with attitude and an opinion. On this particular day her opinion irritated him and he slapped her hard across the face then ordered her on to the back of his bike so they could go home. There was something in his eyes that made her resist at first; however, a few slaps later she acquiesced and got on. They were going down the highway at 60 miles an hour when he pulled her arms off his chest and threw her from the back of the bike. There was absolutely no reason she should have survived the fast skid across the hot asphalt. Even more miraculous was that she came out of it with only a few broken bones and the bruises on her face.
She never returned to her boyfriend and was afraid to go back to his place for her belongings. So, on that day Denise learned that if you give up everything in order to gain life, you'll miss none of it.
Denise had left the map of her dream house with her father. She returned home where she discovered it tucked inside one of her favorite books, nestled in her bookshelf. By the end of that month she had signed up to get her GED and picked out a school that would provide her with a license to be an insurance agent.
Denise began to think perhaps her physical problems were related to a psychological disorder when she began to feel better while finishing high school and entering the insurance program. During this time she was able to let go of the issues surrounding her brother and concentrate on herself. While the men in the family continued to manipulate her into taking care of the house she was fine with the arrangement as long as they allowed her to follow her own path.
One day her father came rushing into her bedroom carrying a magazine. “This is it!”
“What is 'it'?” Denise asked looking up from her exam studies.
“This article tells all about a disease called lupus erythematosus. It almost exactly describes the symptoms your mother had.”
Later that night Denise read the article and realized it not only described her mother, but her own symptoms as well. She was determined to discover if that was what she had.
Since she was feeling well at the time, Denise did not pursue the medical issues at that time. She finished school and secured a job at a high profile insurance company. The fact that she was now working for one of the best medical insurance agencies in the country became a great irony in her life.
At the time, however, Denise wanted to take advantage of the fact that the disease seemed to have disappeared. She surrounded herself with friends from work and spent most of her spare time doing whatever was necessary to move up the corporate ladder. Every night before she went to bed she looked at the map of her dream house, checked the balance in her savings and began picking out furniture in her sleep.
She met Frank when he stopped her for speeding in a residential zone. A tall, lean mild mannered policeman he was the last person you might expect to be part of the homicide department for Los Angeles, one of the most crime-ridden cities in America. In fact, he had recently transferred there from New York City where he had been instrumental in solving some of their most difficult puzzles. When he was offered the transfer he jumped on it. Not only would it give him the opportunity to work in a new venue, it was warm. Frank was tired of battling the bitter cold nights while securing a crime scene. If the murder had been brutal, he often stumbled in to headquarters with numb toes and ears burning. It would be nice to solve crime in an environment surrounded by palm trees. The only thing that caused Frank to hesitate on the assignment was that he would be thousands of miles away from his family. While he had never married, he was very close to his sisters and their children. His father was almost 89 and he wondered if he would ever see him again, or if his next visit home would be to bury him.
On the day Frank stopped Denise for speeding, he was in the area on an off-duty errand. Since she was not speeding excessively, he would ordinarily have let the incident go. But when he saw the long blond braid secured with a daisy, he was intrigued. He had to meet her. She was everything he wasn't.
Before Frank could ask for identification, Denise had flown into a rage. She asked him if he didn't have other things to do. Weren't there rapes, murders or mayhem anymore? She was hardly going ten miles over the limit and there wasn't a soul in sight.
Rather than get excited and arrest Denise for being a pain in the ass, Frank smiled and chuckled at her. This infuriated Denise more and she ranted for a few more minutes. When she realized he wasn't going to react to her tantrum, Denise stopped and stared at him intently.
“What's wrong with you? Aren't you even going to tell me to shut up?” She asked, her deep blue eyes starting to fill with tears.
“What, and miss a great show?” Frank grinned. “I knew you would eventually calm down. Besides, I kinda liked watching you. Did you know you have one of the most expressive faces I've ever seen? Of course, since I usually deal with dead people that's not saying much.”
For a few moments Denise just stared at him, her mouth open in amazement. Then, despite herself, she began laughing.
“I'm so glad my face is more expressive than a corpse's.” She said. “Is that right? Or is it corpse' without the 's'?”
“Damned if I know,” Frank responded. “But I'll ask the next one I meet.”
An hour later Denise and Frank were sitting in a small cafe drinking coffee, the speeding ticket long forgotten. Frank never did finish his errand that day. As he recounted the story later to listeners, he would always add, “I got something much better anyway.”
They were married less than five months later. It seemed to others they had a very odd relationship. Frank was quiet, conservative and constantly optimistic. Denise was gregarious, often spent Saturdays at peace protests and was prone to dark moods. In fact, it was almost a perfect arrangement. Frank kept Denise focused and she, in turn, kept him from stagnating. Besides, he saw the map of her dream house and instantly adopted it as his own.
Long before Frank moved to LA he had been considering early retirement from the force. He was quite a bit older than Denise and there had been a lot of bodies to bury. With Denise's encouragement he moved back to the streets for awhile and supported her as she began to prepare for a management position. Then, ten months after the wedding, their lives were changed forever.
Frank was on a routine traffic stop. There was no way he could possibly have known that the car he stopped had fifteen pounds of cocaine tucked into the trunk. Before he could reach the driver's window, someone in the backseat opened fire. Frank managed to duck under the fender, grab his own weapon and kill the shooter. As soon as he returned fire, the car took off, leaving Frank to fall back onto the pavement in a pool of his own blood. If a passerby had not stopped within that first few minutes, he would not have made it to the hospital. In a fifteen hour surgery, the doctors managed to retrieve the bullet and repair his heart. The issue of early retirement was decided for him.
For the first month after the shooting, Denise managed to hold it together and care for Frank. She would work long hours at the office then come home to take up the housekeeping. The depression that inevitably follows heart surgery hit Frank like a Mac truck and he spent much of his time sitting in his den, staring out the window. He became afraid to leave the sanctity of their home, terrified he would be shot again.
Denise had not told Frank she was having some symptoms until they could no longer be ignored. Her leg was numb, she was so tired even bathing became an effort. When she developed an infection that refused to go away, she knew there was a real problem. Her primary doctor had put her on Prednisone tens years before and she began to feel better immediately. At that time he was the one who told her she probably had Lupus. At the time she hadn't followed through except for the occasional frustrating visit to another doctor who told her it was psychosomatic, that Lupus didn't really exist. It was too much for her to deal with so she simply maintained the Prednisone. Now she was discovering that there were side effects to the drug that exceeded the weight gain and mood swings. The drug was destroying her body faster than the disease. And now that the Lupus was out of remission, the two were ganging up to see which could kill her faster. She had to tell Frank she could not pursue the management position and would have to quit working.
Frank realized he had to let go of his own depression. It was time for them to make some major adjustments to their lives so they could have some semblance of normalcy. After pouring over their savings statements and investments they decided to build the house Denise had mapped out. They would do it at the foot of the Sierra Nevada mountains where it was less expensive and would provide them with more privacy.
By 1993, Denise and Frank were settled into their huge house on ten acres of land with their menagerie. Denise accepted that she was dying, but it was difficult to accept that it could possibly have been avoided had she not been treated by doctors who deemed women as less than human. She was determined that she would do everything possible to make certain other women did not suffer the same fate. When she had the opportunity, she would speak out against medical injustice. What she desired, more than anything, was to save a life. Perhaps, if she could manage to do something that would change one fragile life, she could somehow feel she had saved the world. So, when Rachel Hirsch offered to introduce her to Betsy Claremont, Denise believed she had found her own way into posterity.