But for years after the affair with John Schmitz left her mother a broken and pathetic woman, Carla Larson always believed that her youngest brother and sister were living somewhere, happily, in California. She had no idea John and Genie were in an orphanage and the thought of it brought anguish and a flood of tears.
“They have a sister who would have taken them in a heartbeat. If someone had called me when our mother died four years ago, I would have been there. We would have found a way to take them into our home. I was living here in Montana… I would have found some way. They are my brother and sister. They have a father and they have two sisters—and the Schmitz kids, too.”
She wondered why John Schmitz didn't contact her when her mother died. Carla Larson knew John Schmitz. It wasn't as if he had no knowledge of her.
Then it hit her.
She blamed Mary Schmitz. Mary hadn't wanted to take the children in or acknowledge their link to her husband.
“Why would she take the proof of her husband's infidelity into her own home? That was not Mary's way. That would be asking too much of a woman like her,” Carla said later.
But John Schmitz, what was his excuse? She couldn't figure out why he didn't stand up for those children when they really needed it. It blew her mind that those children had to live like that when they had a father.
“Why are those kids in an orphanage?” she asked over and over in 1998. “Those poor kids must think their sister doesn't care about them. They must wonder why their own sister didn't come after them.”
Chapter 11
CALIFORNIA WAS FAR away, the shimmer of the ocean from her bedroom window was a cherished memory. Never more would there be phone calls from friends all over Orange County.
“Hey, Mary Kay, look outside and tell us what the beach is doing!”
The Carla Stuckle scandal was not relevant anymore, because her father had told her it was not important. And Mary Kay Schmitz was enrolled in classes at Arizona State University, far from it all.
All of Mary Kay Schmitz's friends were beautiful. That had been true with Michelle in Corona del Mar and it was true of a fine-boned blond named Kate Stewart at Arizona State University where she met Mary Kay in the late fall of 1982. Kate was a political science major and Mary Kay was dabbling in the arts, talking about teaching. And while they were at Arizona State to get their college degrees, both knew that meeting the right man was a possibility, too. The young women dumped their roommates and moved in together when the best apartment in the complex where they both lived became available.
Mary Kay had just broken up with a man that friends thought was the love of her life—long before a Samoan boy named Vili Fualaau, of course. Mary Kay had entertained the idea that she might marry the guy, though he hadn't asked her. And, she said later, she hadn't gone to bed with him. It was a long time since she'd been a virgin, of course, but for this man she was saving herself for the honeymoon.
“I'd seen [Mary Kay and the college man] together a few times when Mary Kay was at the apartment,” Kate Stewart recalled. “Then it was over, and I wasn't paying too much attention that he was such a big deal to her. When we got closer she described the whole thing for me. I read the letters and I thought, How could this guy undo this… it shouldn't have happened. I wouldn't say it devastated her. It would take a lot to devastate her. I wouldn't say she's devastated now. You can't break this girl.”
Kate and Mary Kay never had any classes together. At the time they met, Kate had left her sorority, tired of being told what to do and when to do it. Mary Kay was looking into pledging and, in time, would choose Pi Fi. Their friendship remained strong. Between classes at the university and hostess and waitress jobs at Mother Tuckers Restaurant or the Paradise Bar and Grill, the two were party companions, driving to and from hot spots in Mary Kay's Ford Fiesta without any brakes.
Mary Kay loved to party.
“She lives on the edge,” Kate said later of her friend. “She's one of those personalities. She's very outgoing, very nonmainstream. She has her own mind, her own way, and I've accepted that.”
Wearing miniskirts they had just made—hemmed with tape because there hadn't been time to finish them before heading out one night—Kate and Mary Kay went out to party. That night at a frat party at Pi Kappa Alpha, Kate ran into friends from Chicago and Mary Kay was partying and dancing with a nice-looking guy, blond and buff, a fraternity boy from Alaska named Steve Letourneau. When Kate wanted to move on to the next hot spot, she couldn't get Mary Kay to shake the new guy. Steve even followed them out to Mary Kay's car. Kate got into the driver's seat.
“They were talking and talking. Come on, let's go. Then I thought, Well, maybe she's really interested in him.”