Surrogate Parents Draw the Curtains on the Curious, Try for a Normal Life

TUSTIN —  The day after a judge’s ruling changed their lives, Mark and Crispina Calvert looked to all the world like many other young married couples: He went off to work and she stayed home with the baby.

But there was a telling sign that the emotional tumult that spilled into this house in the wake of a nationally watched test-tube baby case had not yet disappeared--on a sunny California day, the curtains were drawn.

Crispina Calvert said she is tired of cars full of curiosity seekers pulling to a stop outside and craning their necks for a glimpse of the black-haired infant who was born into a furious, draining custody fight.

“We’ll open the curtains sometime, but I’m not quite ready yet,” she told The Times.

Since mid-August, the unique surrogate mother case has hijacked the hearts and minds of the Calverts and Anna L. Johnson, the woman they hired to carry their embryo, as well as a team of lawyers and a judge. On Monday, Orange County Superior Court Judge Richard N. Parslow Jr. handed victory to the Calverts, ruling that Johnson had no rights to the boy. Johnson, 29, has vowed to keep fighting in the appeals court.

“I feel like a ton of bricks has been lifted off my shoulders,” Crispina Calvert said.

Everyone tried to resume normal lives Tuesday, but signs of the emotional firefight lingered.

Johnson was “solemn and quiet” Monday but “more talkative” on Tuesday and “seemed to be returning more to herself,” said her lawyer, Richard C. Gilbert. Although Johnson was upset, she anticipated Monday’s decision and was emotionally prepared for it, he said.

Johnson, who has been on disability from her job as a licensed vocational nurse, spent part of Tuesday on the telephone, Gilbert said, looking for a new apartment, since she has been staying temporarily in Mission Viejo, and for a new job.

He said Johnson has “mixed feelings” about the prospect of returning to work at Western Medical Center, where she met Crispina Calvert, a registered nurse. She worries how her co-workers might treat her when she returns, and if it will be awkward when she runs into Crispina Calvert in the hallways, Gilbert said.

Gilbert said he was focusing on the future and feeling certain that Johnson will win her case in the appeals court. But even as he prepared his appeal Tuesday and returned to work on other cases, anger over Monday’s ruling seeped into his thoughts.

“Even though it was all very predictable, I’m still angry the judge didn’t follow the law,” Gilbert said. “It’s a case of the system failing. I’m disappointed. But I’m pinning my hopes on the appeal.”

Gilbert said he drew strength from a visit he made to church Monday with Johnson. Gazing at a crucifix for 20 minutes, he said, he realized something that seemed to capture the battle he had just fought.

“Was Mary genetically related to Jesus Christ? And yet everyone recognizes that Mary is the mother of Christ. Perhaps that was really the first non-genetic (parent-child) case. I just knew more than ever that we were right in what we were doing.”

One of the Calverts’ lawyers, Christian R. Van Deusen, took the second half of a Mammoth Lakes fishing trip that had been interrupted when the case gained momentum. The other, Robert Walmsley, “hit the grindstone” on other cases, spending Tuesday in Los Angeles on a contested adoption case and preparing to fly out to Stockton and Sacramento on others later this week.

“I was riding on adrenalin, but then when the arguments were done and all we could do was wait for the ruling, there was a real letdown, and I got depressed,” Walmsley said. “Yesterday, I was still shell-shocked, but today I’m back.”

The baby’s court-appointed lawyer, Harold F. LaFlamme, said he had been unable to read books--his favorite leisure pastime--or sleep much during the Calvert case because he was “operating on maximum brainpower.” Now it is a “relief” to get back to his usual battery of child-abuse cases, he said.

The infant’s court-appointed guardian, William Steiner, said he was “absolutely drained” and “close to burnout,” even after three decades of working with abused and neglected children. He said he was unprepared for the depth of emotion involved when three people wanted the same child.

The hallway outside Parslow’s fifth-floor courtroom had been overrun with a jostling, shouting mob of news media in the last three weeks, but on Tuesday it was finally quiet.

“Both the bailiff and I remarked we were not accosted by 45 different press people saying, ‘When will you open? Can we set up now?’ ” said Marci Dambert, Parslow’s clerk.

Inside the courtroom, it was back to business as usual for Parslow as he began a new breach-of-contract trial--this one involving real estate.

The day after his widely publicized decision, Parslow was teased by other judges about when his autograph sessions might begin and who did his makeup, Dambert said. At the lunch recess, one judge left him a letter that began, “Dear Sol . . . ,” a sly poke at Parslow for having been likened to King Solomon during the trial.

The judge himself declined interviews, noting that it would be inappropriate to comment because the case is expected to be appealed.

“He hasn’t talked much about it,” Dambert said of the normally loquacious jurist. “He doesn’t get involved in the ego side of it. He’s not that type of judge.”

Crispina Calvert said she thinks that even the baby, Christopher, senses the post-battle calm. For the first night in weeks, both mother and child slept soundly Monday night, she cradling the tiny infant in her arms.

As Parslow read his decision in court Monday, the mother said, she was “shaking, and Mark’s arm was around me, and I could feel his arm shaking.” During the trial, she has been so drained that she didn’t cook much. Her mother and sister came over and cooked instead, she said. But Tuesday night, she was back to her old ways, cooking one of her husband’s favorite Filipino meals: beef with coconut milk, spinach and peanut butter.

“I think we’re finally getting kind of back to normal,” she said. “Thank God that all that is finished.”