Small Sacrifices (20 page)

marriage." It is more likely that she had been romanticizing the man who would father this baby, dramatically picturing an impossible love between herself and the rich, successful husband of a barren woman, wondering if the man might not love her more because she could bear his child.

Things went smoothly. Diane did not cross paths with the natural father.

Louisville charmed Diane. She was waited on, served hot

soup, tucked in at night, totally pampered. It was as marvelous as she had hoped. She was part of a wonderful project--the most important part. The whole experience was exhilarating and fun. Dr. Levin even drove a Corvette with personalized license plates: BABY4U. Diane speculated to herself that the surrogate project must have made him very wealthy.

The initial insemination procedure took only twenty minutes. Diane conceived at once. She knew she would. Confident of her own fecundity even as she flew home to Chandler, she was triumphant and elated.

And pregnant.

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Diane Downs was probably as happy as it was possible for her to be in the fall of 1981. Carrying the U.S. mail was the best job she'd ever had, even though she considered it a temporary plateau. She knew that she pleased her superiors at work; she wasn't even worried that they would make her take medical leave when her pregnancy became apparent. She was living in a beautiful house. Best of all, Steve wasn't there--only herself, and Christie, Cher, and Danny. No men to boss her around.

Her pregnancy made her feel so good. Her eyes sparkled, her skin glowed. She knew she was more attractive than she had ever been. She flirted with the men she worked with and they flirted back. The baby was still a minuscule embryo in her womb, too small to show, but she could picture it snuggled in there--not a

"little ball of slime" as she'd once thought, but a real living, growing entity.

Somewhere in America, there were two people waiting with her, exulting with her. She could not replace "Carrie," but she was bringing another life to earth. There would be no diapers, no colic, no bottles, no mess.

Only happiness. Only praise.

"I was very idealistic about it," Diane remembers, but gradually she felt a connection growing. "As the months went by, I got attached to it. Could I give it up?"

That attachment was what the psychologists had feared. They had doubted that this emotionally frangible woman could give up the baby.

Diane still thought she could.

The fall of 1981 wasn't all that good for Diane. There was Mary Ward, for instance, whose concern for Cheryl finally reached a point where she had to do something. Mary didn't call the

authorities--she wasn't a snitch--but she wrote a letter to Diane, saying that it was dangerous for Cheryl to be home alone, especially since there had been some break-ins in the neighborhood. Enraged, Diane stalked over to Mary's house that afternoon. Her mail route was in the neighborhood, she explained, and she stopped in to check on Cheryl. Cheryl wasn't a neglected child. I Cheryl stood silently beside her mother, her thin face set in I worried lines. Mary was horrified when Diane turned to Cheryl and said vehemently, "You're such a bad little girl! If you don't obey Mommy, you deserve to be killed."

But as the women continued to talk, Diane calmed down. An agreement was struck. Mary would care for all three of Diane's children. After that first conversation the two neighbors talked often. Diane admitted that she'd once been abusive to her children, but insisted that she'd stopped shaking them and screaming at them. Mary wasn't so sure it was over. Christie was old beyond her years, a little mother herself; Cheryl seemed a lovestarved, little waif, so depressed for a child. Only Danny was full of laughter.

One evening, Mary was in her front yard with Cheryl and her own children when her husband arrived home. "I saw John turning into the driveway and I held out both my arms to stop the kids from running in front of the car. Cheryl darted out, right in front of the car and John just missed hitting her. I ran over and grabbed her and I asked her why she had done such a thing. Cheryl said, 'It doesn't matter. Nobody cares.' "

Diane, however, recalls that she and the children were having a marvelous time in the fall of 1981. "I was as much a kid as they were. I carried them, hugged them, took them out for pizza." Steve Downs was the only blotch on Diane's perfect world. He continued to visit the children and Diane claims that he threatened her life.

"Steve came over once in November. I was pregnant and lying on the couch with my back turned to him. I heard a click. I turned around and there was a ... gun, pointed right at my head?" She says that Steve smiled faintly--and pulled the trigger. there was only another hollow click, an empty chamber.

in her early pregnancy, Diane was no delicate flower with morn-"g sickness and fatigue. Instead, she was running her routes so as! at the Chandler post office that some of the male carriers

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resented her. She was smart and quick and she wasn't averse to crowing a little bit when she made it back in the post office before any of the men. She started with a rural route, but soon earned herself a city route.

Diane's affair with Tim Lowry began sometime that October when she invited him home for lunch.

"I thought we were just going to eat and talk, but she came over to the couch where I was sitting and started kissing me. We ended up in bed."

He was to be the second in a series of lovers, married men she worked with at the Chandler post office.

Tim saw early on that Diane craved attention. "Steve told me once that she was just looking for love--and maybe he was right. . . . A lot of people at the post office thought she was a slut. I don't know .. ."

Diane moved on. Married men were a fix for her; she drained power from them. The knowledge that she could have a man who was forbidden excited her. Men could be mastered.

"I loved them all ... I just don't go to bed with people; I love them. Sex hadn't been rewarding with Steve--although a

relationship is not founded merely in sex. I only slept with Tim two times, and I only slept with Walt Neff once. The other guys were my friends."

But that was, of course, before Lew. After Lew, everything was different.

Diane moved from the heady joy of her early surrogate pregnancy into a period of extreme stress. While she was working

full-time, carrying a pregnancy for someone else, having affairs with married men, and living for the first time the life of a single mother, her kids were sick all winter. Cheryl and Danny were chronically ill with one thing or another. Danny had tonsillitis four times in three months; his temperature soared dangerously high. Cheryl had severe nosebleeds.

Mary Ward wasn't the only neighbor who worried about the Downs children. Clan Sullivan, who lived three doors down on Palomino Street, considered them "emotionally starved." Sulhvan saw the kids playing outside often in bare feet and without coats--even in November and December.

^ And they were hungry. "Cheryl would show up at our house ^ in the evening and ask what we'd had for dinner. She hadn't

eaten. She was hungry and she wanted a sandwich. I don't know

where her mother was." The Sullivans fed Cheryl, and they discussed adopting her themselves.

Diane Downs and her children were living a curious existence. The baby in her womb was inviolate, floating safely in

arnniotic fluid, lulled by its mother's heartbeat. Diane took her I vitamins and visited her doctor regularly, just as she'd promised to do in her contract. She certainly got enough exercise on her -postal route.

| The children she'd already given birth to were not faring as well. Cheryl's nosebleeds might well have been caused by malnutrition. Danny's strep infections were certainly exacerbated by

playing outside with bare feet and no coat in the November chill that crept down from the mountains. They ate fast-food pickup stuff: pizza, tacos, hamburgers. Or Christie made peanutbutter sandwiches for them.

Diane beat Steve by winning custody of the children, but she had no time to spend with them. She was belatedly living out the playful, teen-age years she lost when she'd been so anxious to get away from home that she married Steve. She reveled in all the heady flirting, the teasing, the way men responded to her in bed. She didn't have to worry about getting pregnant. She already was pregnant!

But she was blind to the way she treated her kids. Her

favorite phrase in referring to herself and Christie, Cheryl, and" Danny is that they were the Four Musketeers, the four of them

against the world. She remembers some wonderful times they had together. She is always the beloved Mommy with her laughing, adoring children gathered around her. It is a picture from a children's storybook.

Karl Gamersfelder--"Garni," her supervisor at the Chandler post office--remembers a discussion with Diane just before Christmas, 1981. She was concerned because she'd "hit the kids the night before harder than she ever had before." He advised her to l seek counseling.

Diane didn't go.

In her quest to be somebody, Diane was more and more possessed by a kind of manic energy. She often felt she could do ^ythmg. She was doing extremely well at the post office; she

could aim for an administrative spot one day. But then again . . . ^"e had thought about starting her own surrogate parent program. l here was more money in that. . . but it would have to wait until

136 ANN RULE

she learned more about the whole procedure. Or she might go to medical school. . . become a doctor as she'd always meant to do. Diane's surrogate pregnancy was obvious as 1982 started. Some of the people she worked with didn't approve of this "brave new world" concept of being a "baby factory," but they had to agree that the often-sullen, moody Diane they had known before seemed constantly cheerful. It was as if she had suddenly found some elixir of happiness.

She had.

Diane had become part of the lives of her baby's parents, living vicariously their existence, an existence which she perceived as perfect and tranquil. Her own family had always disappointed her. For this time, she was part of another family--an

idealized family where people loved each other, where she was a valuable member. Now she was the most important member of this family; she was carrying the baby that would make them so happy.

"It was a family thing. I wrote to them all through the pregnancy--cards and letters."

Diane had no idea who the parents of her baby were. One

day she would see them, but she was not supposed to know their names. She sent her letters and cards to the surrogate parenting office in Kentucky, signed "Your friend," and they were forwarded on to the expectant parents.

After two and a half decades, Diane finally felt good about herself.

"I had a purpose for being here. And that's been my whole hang-up since I was a little kid. Why am I here? Just so my dad can yell at me? Just so my husband can criticize me? Just to take care of my kids? But these people needed me. It made me somebody. I told the parents that the baby did more for me than I

ever did for them.

"People have wondered why I won't regret this, giving up the baby. And that's very easy to answer. When you kill a child, when you have an abortion, you've terminated something. You've murdered somebody--it's cruel, it's horrible, it's terrible. But when you do something out of love, when you carry a child for somebody else, and turn that life over to them to be cared for, you haven't done anything bad, and it's nothing you can look j| back on and regret. It's good."

a Later, Diane would refer to this nine months of pregnancy as the most stable period of her life. Her thoughts came in an

interview that she gave to Elizabeth Beaumiller of the Washington Post in March, 1982. Beaumiller had selected three surrogate mothers for a feature article entitled "Mothers for Others." Diane

was thrilled that it was beginning already. Fame. Diane's picture two columns wide in a major newspaper. Dr. Levin had been in f>fewsweek and Time and on the "Donahue Show." Diane fully

expected to become more and more famous.

The woman presented to the Washington reporter was serene-"The Madonna Diane." The picture that accompanied the piece showed a pretty blonde with a gently swelling belly who gazed back at the camera with the confidence and quiet aplomb of a princess. Beaumiller would recall somewhat ruefully that she gave the most column space in her feature to Diane--who gave her name as "Elizabeth Kane"--because Diane seemed to be the most emotionally mature of the trio of surrogate mothers she interviewed.

The baby was due on May 10, 1982.

As the due date neared, Diane sent the other "mother-to-be" a funny card with a papoose swaddled on a backboard. Inside the papoose grinned and said "HELLO!"

Diane penned in her own hand:

I tried to find a Mother's Day card for the mother-to-be, but I couldn't find one. Then I saw this one, and it was just too cute to put down. So, I'll just have to say this with my own words: "Happy Mother's Day--for the mother-to-be. Hope your day is full of joy as you are awaiting your new arrival."

I am feeling much better now and am getting more anxious by the day for my trip to Kentucky. I will arrive in

Kentucky the evening of May 10th--so I'll probably see Dr. Levin on the llth. It's so hard to believe that the much anticipated day is nearly here. The time has gone by so

quickly.

I know you'll be in the delivery room, but perhaps you

and [husband's first name] can stop by the labor room for a short chat ... I wanted you to know that I'm willing if you are! See you then. Take care.

VWith love,

your friend,

(and wiggly baby)

138 ANN RULE

Diane was alone in the spring heat of Chandler. She had put Christie and Cheryl on a plane to Oregon at the end of April. Willadene would care for her granddaughters for six weeks even though Wes and Willadene disapproved mightily of what Diane was doing, Steve was taking care of Danny.