“She was almost suicidal when that ended,” Michelle said later of the relationship before Steve Letourneau. “She was as low as I've ever heard her. I remember talking to her on the phone and I was really worried about her. Really worried. This was serious.”
And then she starting talking about Steve Letourneau.
“Try to imagine where her heart and mind was when Steve came along. She needed someone safe. Someone she knew wouldn't hurt her. Someone she could manipulate.”
Michelle had no doubts that Steve was a rebound relationship, the change had been so sudden. Mary Kay had gone from the depths of depression to the joy of a new love. And then she was pregnant and married. Lickety-split. It was too swift.
Michelle would never forget her first impression of Steve Letourneau. He was nice enough, she thought, but Mary Kay could have done much better. She was way out of his league.
“He reminded me of a puppy. Following her around licking her hand.”
Michelle knew that her friend's upcoming marriage meant an end to their friendship as they had envisioned it. The closeness they shared would never be the same. She only wished that Mary Kay would be happy. That Mary Kay's deal with her family to marry her baby's father would be worth it. That her dreams wouldn't die because she had to settle for a man she didn't love.
Chapter 12
WHATEVER STEVE LETOURNEAU'S role in what happened with his wife—and what drove Mary Kay to do what she did with her student—his background was no Norman Rockwell ideal, either. When he was a boy, his parents, Sharon and Dick Letourneau, moved to Anchorage, Alaska, from Puyallup, near Tacoma, Washington, located near the base of Mount Rainier. Dick Letourneau had a job as a salesman for a food products company and the move was a step up. The Letourneaus' shaky marriage didn't survive long after the move. Steve was thirteen and his sister, Stacey, was nine when their parents divorced.
Grandma Nadine, Sharon's mother, was heartbroken, not only because of the divorce, but because the children ended up staying with their father. She said it was their choice, not their mother's wish.
“Sharon didn't abandon them. She lived close to them. She kept track of them every day. She stayed in their living quarters until the kids adjusted to their being apart,” Nadine said later. Sharon stayed nearby and never missed one of her son's baseball games. In time, Steve's mother married a younger man.
Grandma Nadine understood why Steve was resentful of the divorce, but she felt that her daughter Sharon had been made out to be the cause of everything. Years later, the hurt was not completely absent from her words. Grandma Nadine had to admit that though Steve and Stacey loved their mother, they worshiped their dad.
“They had every right to,” she said. “He did everything with them. He was a great father, still is.”
Steve Letourneau returned to the Seattle area for Thanksgiving 1983. His grandmother Nadine had hosted the family gathering in her mobile home in a Puyallup, Washington, trailer court for as many years as most could remember. The guest list included Steve's sister, Stacey, and his father, Dick—Nadine's former son-in-law who had not yet remarried. Among the topics of conversation was the woman Steve had been dating at Arizona State. The pair were having a fling, but Steve wasn't serious about her.
Grandma Nadine later recounted the new relationship in terms very different from Michelle or Kate's versions. It wasn't Steve who was the hanger-on. “She was on his back constantly. Every place he goes she's there and he can't get rid of her. She had her eye on him. He was very preppy-looking, very good looking.
“ 'She just won't leave me alone,' Steve said.”
Grandma Nadine never minced words. “Steven,” she said, looking him straight in the eye and with convincing authority. “If you don't want her around come right out and tell her, 'Look, buzz off.' ”
Later, the grandmother would regret how her grandson had ignored her words.
A few months later, Nadine heard some startling news. Steve and the girl were getting married. Her name was Mary Kay Schmitz, the daughter of a highfalutin senator or something. Nadine was surprised because the last she heard, Steve had wanted to get away from the girl.
Arizona State University was part of the past. The college degrees they had sought would have to wait. Suntanned sorority girls and fraternity boys joined the Schmitz family as they celebrated the hurry-up wedding of Steve Letourneau and almost four-months-pregnant Mary Kay Schmitz on June 30, 1984. Dolgren Chapel at Georgetown University, where John Schmitz had been on sabbatical, was the venue. It was by any estimation a lovely and very Catholic wedding. Leaving no detail unplanned, the bride paid special attention to the music. She had three trumpeters and a vocalist.