Small Sacrifices (19 page)

Next came a barrage of psychological tests--some new and some established--designed to probe beneath the surface. Diane was given ten standard tests: the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS), the Bender Visual-Motor Gestalt Test,

the Background Interference Procedure, Wide Range Achievement Test (WRAT), Problem Checklist, Rotter Incomplete Sentences Blank, Rorschach Inkblot Technique, and the Minnesota

Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI). Most Americans who have been to college or applied for skilled jobs have had one or more of these tests.

Diane sailed through the IQ tests, placing high up in the

"superior range of intelligence." However, there were small red flags scattered in other tests. Diane did not do well in areas where she had to demonstrate social cause-and-effect reasoning, attention span, and concept formation.

"These findings were consistent with, but not absolutely diagnostic, of a major psychopathology," the report from the clinical psychologist concluded.

Diane apparently perceived the world around her uniquely. Her test results might have been early warnings of a profound psychosis (insanity) or only of strong personality quirks. Everyone has personality quirks; very few are insane.

After Diane talked about her parents and her siblings, the psychologist wrote: "Parents are described as strict and distant people who devoted little effort to demonstrating affection to their children. Ms. Downs alleged that at the age of twelve she was sexually molested by her father. (She claims virtually no interest in sex since then, an issue which has continued to buffet her marriage) . . . The couple's last child, reportedly, was the result of Ms. Downs' picking five 'ugly' younger men to seduce in order to have a child by one of them. . . . Ms. Downs was well oriented and generally appropriate. Speech was quite pressured, had a controlling quality, and was characterized by an air of forced jocularity. Ms. Downs's conversation was effusive, immature, and frequently self-disparaging."

Why Diane told the psychologist the story about the "five ugly men" is a puzzle. She never told anyone else that. But she had continued her pattern of compulsive talking--spilling the beans about everything she'd so carefully hidden in her written application form. And the doctor was concerned.

He was particularly fascinated with her MMPI (Minnesota

Multiphasic Personality Inventory) results. This test consists of several hundred questions which can be answered "yes" or "no." g There are many "deliberate-lie" questions for validation which! appear more than once. Diane's pattern of response indicated gross deficits of egofunctioning. In layman's language, she did not believe that she

was very good or very important. Her ego was almost nonexistent. At her core, beneath her bravado, Diane saw herself as a

cipher.

Her examiner detected significant psychological problems--"ut, try as he might, he could not isolate them. Diane Downs was "nique. She could be compared for a time with other subjects she rosembled, but then her responses slipped out of synch. She could ""t be pigeonholed as either normal or abnormal.

"A clear-cut neurotic picture is not present. Similar individuals display frequent selfdepreciation and are seen as very un 126 ANN RULE

guarded and without normal social defensiveness (they do not typically, take advantage of normal social feedback). This individ^ ual has poor ability to express anger in a modulated fashion and

tends to have poor behavioral controls. Despite a somewhat flamboyant facade, this woman tends to be shy, timid and retiring." The Kentucky psychologist found Diane depressed and worried because she found no enjoyment of sex, and because she

never felt that she did anything right. He thought he understood why she wanted to become a surrogate mother:

For her, the surrogate parenting opportunity calls forth several motives. She looks at the prospect of being a surrogate mother as an opportunity to present her husband with a

'gift' which would deflect attention from a highly unstable marriage where Ms. Downs feels she is not, in a broad sense, able to function adequately. She is, in a characteristically histrionic manner, anticipating being relieved of her sexual and social obligations. She fantasizes respite from many areas of her personal and social adjustment which let her feel inadequate, insufficient, anxious, and ineffectual.

Diane needed time out from her life; she wanted to feel safe and serene. She wanted to do something people would praise her for. Common goals, but, in Diane, blown all out of proportion. Being pregnant was her means of running away from life,

without having to resort to black forgetfulness. There was another goal Diane hid from her examiner in 1980. Being a surrogate mother was to be her ticket out of mediocrity.

Diane flunked her first psychological test because the examiner didn't believe she would surrender a surrogate baby.

Neither Diane nor Steve learned the test results. Diane assumed she'd cleared the first hurdle. She was confident she'd

impressed the psychologist. After a lifetime of feeling ugly, she now believed she was pretty. She'd smiled and laughed a lot. She'd practically sailed right off the top of the IQ scale. What more could they want?

Nobody in Louisville told Diane she'd flunked; the surrogate clinic delayed. They surely could locate a psychologist who would fr give her passing marks. They were aware that the first testers had

personal prejudices against surrogate parenting, which might have colored their report on Diane Downs.

Two weeks later, Diane and Steve celebrated their last Christ-

mas together. Christmas, 1980. "Steve was hard to buy for. I couldn't afford a car, but I knew he liked guns." The year before Diane had given Steve a .22 Glenfield rifle. This year, she gave him a .38 revolver.

During the first week of February, 1981, Diane was examined by a Phoenix psychiatrist at the request of the Louisville clinic. They still had to have a satisfactory psychological report before they could even consider her first insemination. The results of that hour-and-a-half exam were much the same as the report by the Kentucky psychologists. The Arizona psychiatrist had perceived that Diane could shut her emotions down at will, simply shut off feelings like flicking a light switch.

"[Subject is] very attractive . . . very intelligent . . . somewhat hypertalkative--very anxious to get into the program. Nevertheless, one gets the impression that, particularly from the point of view of her affect, it is significantly superficial. ... In reference to her father--she has forgiven him and even though they both know about it [the incestuous molestation] they have never said one word to each other in reference to 'their secret.' She definitely uses defense mechanisms of repression and rationalization.

"On occasion, she gives the impression of being able to isolate her affect completely."

This doctor was the second to mention a profound defect in Diane's personality: Histrionic personality disorder. (Histrio=

actor.) He too thought it was iffy that Diane would be able to give up the baby. On the other hand, he suggested that participation in the surrogate program might give Diane the opportunity to expiate her guilt over her abortion five years earlier.

Not one of the psychologists or psychiatrists detected her black-outs, nor did they recognize her soaring ambition. Diane passed.

If she barely squeaked through on her emotional stability qualifications, she aced the physical exam. Her blood pressure ^s 120/78, her pulse 72, her respirations 18 to the minute. To-^lly normal.

The genetic flow chart of her progenitors was next. Twenty-rour relatives: Wes's parents and his six siblings, Willadene's

Parents and her five siblings, Wes and Willadene, Diane's four siblings, and finally Christie, Cheryl, and Danny. The names ^arched down the chart. No genetic flaws. Violent and accidental

725 ANN RULE

deaths, yes, but no diabetes, hypertension, strokes. Most of the entries' names were followed by "Alive and Well." A cheerful, optimistic flow chart.

Diane was accepted into the surrogate program. She had

given birth to three perfect children, all "Alive and Well"—three blonds, one with green eyes, two with brown eyes. Soon, she would conceive again.

And then she would give the child up.

Pure love.

Diane eagerly awaited her summons to Kentucky. She ignored Steve. Christie, Cheryl, and Danny were farmed out to babysitters much of the time. Russ Phillips leapt at the chance to have Danny whenever he could. Diane laid down some rules. Russ was not to date other women or to drink alcohol. Sweetening her edicts, she hinted that she might change her mind some day and marry him. Overhearing the "Diane Rules," one of the women who shared a house with Russ grimaced. But she felt sorrier for the children than she did for Russ. Especially for Cheryl.

"Diane put everything before those kids. If Danny wanted attention, she would push him away . . . but the worst thing was—one time, I caught Cheryl jumping on the bed, and I told her that was not permitted. I made her sit on a chair and think about it. Cheryl sat quietly for a while, and then she looked up. 'Do you have a gun here?' 'Of course not. Why?' 'I want to shoot myself. My mom says I'm bad.' "

When there were no willing sitters, Diane left the kids home alone. Christie was six, Cheryl five, and Danny was fifteen months.

, Christie bore responsibility well. Mature far beyond her years, she was protective of her little sister and baby brother. At long last the Downses' marriage burst.

"Steve usually just memorized girls' phone numbers," Diane describes the final split. "But one day I was doing his laundry—

cleaning out his pockets, looking for bills ... I pulled out a wadded-up paper with a phone number and an address on it. That night, after work, I just handed it to Steve and said, 'I want my divorce now.' "

:! "He said, 'OK.' " gg

Diane was never without a lover. She moved from one man to the next, as smoothly as if she weie changing partners at a square

dance. She never allowed them to hurt her. They weren't that important to her. No man had ever bothered to find out what made her happy; they had only taken what they wanted.

Why Diane sought the company of men is an intriguing question. She had told several psychologists that she detested sex; perhaps she was only ambivalent. Diane may have looked for sensuous pleasure with no emotional involvement. Or she may have liked the sense of power over men that sex gave her. And then again, her need for men may have been simply

pragmatic. Steve told Diane that she would have to buy out his interest in the house--for $5,000. Thirty-four-year-old Mack Richmond, who also carried mail at the Chandler post office, was most taken with the flirtatious, bubbly Diane he knew at work. His marriage was faltering, and he was lonesome. Mack loaned Diane the $5,000. Two weeks after Steve moved out, Mack and

daughters--nine and eleven--moved in.

This first liaison lasted only through the summer of 1981. Mack liked Diane's kids, but he was put off by Steve's frequent visits--and by Diane's parental discipline. "Her kids seemed like

... a pain in the ass to her . . . she felt that kids were inferior, and they weren't even allowed in the living room."

Worse, Diane called Christie, Cheryl, and Danny vulgar,

demeaning names. When she started in on his daughters, Mack gazed longingly at the door.

The woman frightened him a little. At home, she was nothing like she was at work. He couldn't figure her out. Diane was a paradox who read the Bible every night, quoting scripture at him, and minutes later, in bed, she was a tigress who drew blood. She raked Mack's back painfully on three occasions during intercourse. Her scratching wasn't reserved for the bedroom. Once they had an argument in a bar and Diane turned on him, her eyes afire. She reached out with her claws and deliberately scratched both his arms, hissing, "Nobody tells me what to do." Mack left in the fall--without his $5,000. Diane laughs, remembering him: "Mack had a lot of rules ... I couldn't cut my "^r; I couldn't get fat--so that meant I couldn't be a surrogate

mother."

Diane had worked the early shift during the summer of 1981 ""m 5:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. The children were left with a sitter or _h Russ. When September came, Danny was enrolled in the ^erry Moppets nursery. Christie was in school all day. Cheryl _s m morning kindergarten, but when she came home from

130 ANN RULE

school at 11:30 a.m., she was alone. Diane couldn't afford to send her to Merry Moppets and since she was delivering mail in the same general area, she figured Cheryl would be all right. Cheryl would either sit on the porch of the locked house and wait for Diane to come home hours later or wander off to find someone in the neighborhood who would let her in. In Arizona she wasn't cold, but she was hungry and she had to go to the bathroom.

Mary Ward lived two houses down the street. She noticed

the little girl who seemed to have no supervision. Mary worried; they were only a few houses from Alma School Road, a fast, heavy-traffic street. Cheryl became a regular at Mary's house. Mary fed her lunch and let Cheryl play with her own children until Diane got home. Mary vowed to say something, but she put off a confrontation. She'd never met Diane. During the first week of September, Mary realized that she hadn't seen the blonde letter carrier for several days. The children's father was living in the house down the street now, caring for them. The kids seemed cleaner and better fed.

That September of 1981, Diane was in Kentucky. The time

had come at last in Louisville. In Dr. Richard Levin's office, Diane was impregnated with semen from the man known only as:

"Natural Father."

She did not catch a glimpse of the man whose seed was

introduced into her vagina by syringe, although she wondered if she might. She knew that it was fresh--not frozen--semen which would be used. That meant that the natural father would have to deliver it to the clinic just before she was inseminated. When the father came in to present a few cubic centimeters or so of viable sperm, obtained by the only method possible-masturbation--he was scheduled to arrive a half hour before the surrogate mother-to-be. If he was tense and his part in the procedure took longer than planned for, there was the slight chance that he might be leaving the office as Diane was entering. Diane says she didn't want that. "I worried about his romanticizing the woman who would carry his child, and ruining his