Throughout all of it, Mary Kay remained in charge.
“She was always focused, now you need to do this, I need to do this… She knew what was happening, but things were lost. And everything had to be perfect before she went out. Ironed, clean. Everyone had to be just right,” Amber recalled.
Every once in a while Mary Kay would settle down on the ratty sofa or at the table and talk about her past. Sometimes she pulled out pictures of her family, her parents, and her siblings and compared them to snapshots of her own children. She told the Fish twins that she and her mother weren't close, that her father had run for president, and that “Steven was special because he had a twin in heaven.” She kept a portrait of her parents near her kitchen stove.
She also told the teens next door that she had barely graduated from high school because she was a nonstop party girl. The revelation shocked Amber because it was so different from what she had imagined of Mary Kay's pool-perfect life in California.
She was a cheerleader, a perfect student…
And though she spoke of her family now and then, Mary Kay rarely spoke about Steve's family—with the exception of his sister, whom she did not like. In fact, she used Stacy as a weapon whenever she and Steve got into an argument. Mary Kay considered Stacy a pleasant enough girl, but not particularly bright.
“If I've ever needed to get at him in a fight,” she told Amber one day, when they were hanging around the condo, “I'd say, 'you're just like Stacy,' and that would really get him.”
It happens in nearly every family and the reasons vary. But Mary Claire was Daddy's little girl and Steven was Mary Kay's pride and joy. Parents and children often pair off and special bonds are formed. In the Letourneau household it was clear to just about everybody that Mary Kay and her daughter didn't get along. They were always at odds. Steven, however, idolized his mother and she idolized him, too.
“Mary Kay and Mary Claire butted heads a lot. Mary Claire was stubborn and she didn't put up with anything. Steven was Mary Kay's prodigy. That kid could do no wrong. Mary Kay wanted him to be the boy genius and worked at it really hard. A lot harder than she worked with Mary Claire,” Amber Fish recalled.
And from where one observer sat, the relationship between mother and son was detrimental to Mary Kay's oldest daughter.
“Mary Claire was most jealous of their relationship, I think that's why she leaned toward Steve so much.”
There were other factors at work, too. Mary Kay wanted her daughter to slim down, though to any observer the little girl looked just fine.
She was a child, for goodness' sake, not a fashion model.
“I know she was very concerned about Mary Claire's weight,” Angie Fish said later. “I remember when we first moved in there and she was three and they were watching what she ate: 'Mary Claire's not allowed to have any cheese.' “
Steven was everything to his mother. Although the twins felt Mary Kay loved all of her children, she was closest to Steven. The Fish girls remembered “Mommy and Steven Days,” when Mary Kay and her son would go out and do things together, while Steve played with Mary Claire. When Steven got a little older, Mary Kay would take him shopping. They'd return from their outings with tired feet and bulging Nordstrom bags.
The twins later talked about the shopping habits of their favorite neighbor.
“She had really expensive tastes—more expensive than anyone I'd ever known—” Amber recalled.
“And that she could not afford,” cut in Angie.
“She was way out of her range,” Amber continued. “She brought home bags and bags from Nordstrom when we knew they could not afford it. Shoes for the kids, a two-hundred-dollar dress for herself.”
Her best friend from her days at Arizona State, Kate Stewart, understood Mary Kay's quandary and her modus operandi. So what if she over-shopped? Who didn't max out a credit card from time to time? Kate always considered Mary Kay a “loves life” kind of woman, one who lived each minute to the fullest. She knew what she wanted and went after it with the kind of gusto that few could emulate. And, more than anything, she wanted to be surrounded by people who lived life the same way. That included her friends, her children, and her husband. Mary Kay was a woman who wanted a lot from the world, a woman who required a lot out of life. Yet there she was, trapped. Trapped in a dull, mundane existence in a crummy condo in Kent, Washington, with a husband she didn't really love.
Her emotions quietly fraying like blue jeans, Mary Kay deserved more.
BOOK II
Teacher
Mary Letourneau is not only a gift to Shorewood Elementary School, but a gift to the entire Highline School District.