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fetus is slime ... I saw a six-weeks' fetus. That baby had arms,
legs, fingers, toes, a head, eyes. That was a human being and I
killed it! I felt so horrible about itùthat I'd killed somebody like
that. Oh, I didn't do it myself but I hired a doctor to do it."*
Belatedly, Diane gave her lost baby a name: Carrie. She
sensed that it had been a girl. The little girl who never was
became an obsession. Diane decided to replace Carrie; she would
conceive again, and the baby would be Carrie. "She hadn't had a
soulùthis would give her one."
.ò ò
*Bradley interview
SMALL SACRIFICES 115
For Diane, Carrie was somewhere in limbo, waiting to come
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back into the world.
Diane asked Steve to have his vasectomy reversed, and he
looked at her bewildered. She'd been so damn pushy that he go
get cut in the first place!
"I asked him for a year, and he kept saying no. Finally, I
said, 'Fine. I will find a suitable donor.' "
Steve Downs does not remember that conversation; he does
remember what happened next. Diane was in an excellent position
to find--quite literally--a stud. By late 1978 the Downses
were living in Mesa, Arizona, both employed by the Palm Harbor
Mobile Home Company. Company policy vetoed hiring married
couples, so Diane and Steve said they were divorced. The end of
the marriage was looming anyway, delayed only by their lack of
money to pay an attorney.
Diane was a good worker, quick to pick up new skills. She
wired mobile homes and was one of the best electricians on the
line. Her personality underwent a complete metamorphosis the
moment she hit the job. Sullen at home, she was vivacious and
fun at work. The wallflower was not only free of the wall; she
bloomed scarlet and lush.
"I worked around lots and lots of guys. I met men who
treated me like a woman."
For the first time in her marriage, Diane had an affair. Indeed,
she had three affairs with men at the trailer plant. She
wasn't interested in sex for its own sake; she was doing genetic
research. "I watched the people I worked with. I picked somebody
that was attractive . . . healthy . . . not abusive of drugs and
alcohol, strong--bone structure--you know, the whole bit: a good
specimen. It was really clinical."*
The father of choice was nineteen years old; Diane was
twenty-three. Russ Phillips was flattered and bemused.
"I seduced him. And I know my cycle and it only took
once--and I got pregnant."+
Steve suspected that Diane was up to something. "She was going to work early
kind of often. I didn't trust her ... I called "er foreman one specific
morning. Seven was the regular time for "er to leave, and she had left at
five. I asked him, 'Hey--what ^nie you guys goin' to work?' "
^fadley interview
'oi-adley interview
116 ANN RULE
Not that early. The next morning, Steve followed Diane at
5:00 a.m.
"She was over at Russ Phillips's house. She was in bed, making
love to the guy! I hit her . . . him . . . and a couple of his
roommates. They pulled a gun on me. It was a settle-down-orblowit-away
type of situation. That's a bad situation. Real bad. I
told her to get dressed. She could come home with me ..."
Diane refused.
"She should have known at that point it wasn't gonna be a
peaches-and-pie relationship."
Diane didn't care. It was too late. The date was April 11. A
week later, she told Steve she was pregnant. He didn't believe her
at first--how could she know so soon?
Diane had always known exactly when she was most fertile.
She had begun to grow the "replacement baby."
"I'd had a vasectomy," Downs said, recalling the breakdown
of the marriage. "I knew that wasn't my child."
Both Steve and Russ Phillips urged Diane to have an abortion, a
suggestion she found patently ridiculous. She'd conceived this
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baby to make amends for her abortion. Russ thought she was
refusing the abortion because she loved him. He urged her to
divorce Steve and marry him before the baby was born. Diane
was genuinely surprised; it had never occurred to her that Russ
had any claim to this baby--or her. He was a nice-enough guy,
but she had no special feeling for him.
Or for any man.
She waffled, keeping a lid on things, balancing between Steve
and Russ. For the first time in her life, Diane Downs had a little
bit of power over men.
When she was six weeks pregnant, she found scarlet stains in
her panties. For the next week she moved as if on eggshells,
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