The couple's difficulty with money brought the inevitable problems among the family lenders.
“Sharon and Mary Kay didn't get along at all,” said a relative. “They were always calling Sharon for money to pay the power bill, money for food.”
But they kept up the lovely front. Mary Kay flew off to California to visit Michelle or just to get her hair done. When they lived in Alaska when they first got married, Steve would come down to Seattle for his hair appointments. From the outside, it looked like they were glamorous and rich.
“They were trying to be somebody they weren't,” the relative said later. “They didn't care. They knew that someone would bail them out. They knew Steve's mom would give them money. She's not going to let her grand-kids go hungry.”
Steve knew it was true and it made him feel terrible.
“It was all a big façade. It always was,” he admitted years later to a family member.
In August of 1995, Stacey Letourneau was getting married in Alaska, and despite the fact that Mary Kay didn't care much for her sister-in-law, she was named matron of honor. She also insisted on helping with wedding decorations. She even spent a week working on a collage for Stacey—“something that she would keep for the rest of her life, it was that beautiful.” The bride's colors were a blue tone and an apricotlike color that was hard to describe. Nadine and her older daughter, Sandra, went shopping for balloons for the reception decorations but when they returned, Mary Kay said they had made a terrible mistake.
“Those are not the colors! Those are orange! Take them back. They won't work. They'll never work,” she said.
Bullied into it, the women, led by Grandma Nadine, returned to the balloon store, only to learn they had the closest thing to apricot that could be found in all of Alaska. Nadine thought the whole fuss was ridiculous.
“Who in God's name is going to match those balloons with the bows and ribbons, anyway? Who cares?” she asked.
They all knew: Mary Kay.
That evening Mary Kay took the kids in the motor home Dick Letourneau had rented for extra sleeping quarters and drove twenty miles out to Eagle River to the reception hall. She worked all night making sure everything was just so. It was after three A.M. the next day when she returned.
Her way or no way. That was understood by everyone who knew Mary Kay, but most saw it as a sign of perfectionism. Mary Kay had experience with the finer things—and those pep-rally-colored balloons were not going to work. But there was nothing she could do about it. No balloons of the right color could be had in all of Alaska.
Sharon's older sister, Sandra, was on hand to help. In order to keep a clear path for the caterer's comings and goings, Sandra put a plant on a table and placed it in front of one of the doorways to block people from using it.
Mary Kay moved the table and Nadine watched as Sandra told her off.
“I've had it with you, Mary Kay,” she recalled her daughter saying. “I've taken all the shit I'm going to take off of you. You are dealing with the wrong person.”
During one of the Letourneau family visits to Anchorage, Sharon Hume took her granddaughter Mary Claire shopping to pick out an outfit for her birthday. She found a little denim shirt and vest at Lamonts, a mid-priced retailer, and fell in love with it. The little girl couldn't wait for her mother and father to see her wearing it. Steve praised his daughter for her good taste and told her how lovely she looked.
“She was so proud of that outfit that she wore it for three days,” recalled Nadine, who was up in Anchorage visiting at the time.
When Mary Kay arrived from Seattle later, Mary Claire put on the outfit as a surprise. The next thing the adults knew, Mary Claire burst into the living room in tears. Steve and his grandmother asked her what was the matter. Mary Claire said her mother hated her new outfit. “ 'That just makes you look fat,' ” she quoted her mother as saying.
Sharon was very upset. So was Nadine. With Mary Kay, nothing was ever good enough.
Steve told his mom to let go of it and he'd clear it up with his wife later.
“Clear it up later?” Sharon repeated. “You know you are not ever going to bring the subject up! You're not ever going to ask her why! Is it because Grandma Sharon bought it for her? Or is it not good enough?”
“Mom,” Steve said, “just let it ride.”
Nadine jumped right into the fray.
“Who in the hell wears the pants in the family?” she asked her grandson. “You or Mary Kay? Yet I've never seen Mary Kay in a pair of pants.”
Steve didn't say anything back to his grandmother and the old woman just shook her head. Mary Kay was a piece of work.
You never win with her. She is that manipulative. And where did she learn it? she thought.