Though many tried to comply with the substitute's call for order, a few students made it exceedingly difficult. And for good reason. They were used to having control of the classroom to such a degree that Mrs. Letourneau was more a peer than a leader. Word got back to other teachers about the difficult time the sub was experiencing. The students were up in arms.
“We only do that once a week! We're not going to do that!”
The woman on the front lines scurried from teacher to teacher seeking input about the sixth-grade curriculum that had been ignored much of the year. She had to get the students of room 39 focused on their schoolwork and get them to the end of the year.
Mary Letourneau was not coming back. The sub wasn't the enemy and they weren't holding down the fort until the return of their favorite teacher.
Recess dance parties were over and kids were told to get outside and play like the rest of the sixth-graders. It might have been what they “were used to” but it was not going to fly any longer. Homework was doled out and report cards were actually drawn up on time, a first for the year according to a teacher at Shorewood. Other kids looked into the classroom with smiles as big as a goalpost because they knew the party was over. Mrs. Letourneau's kids had to work as hard as they did.
It was about time.
And though it wasn't easy, the children began to accept the substitute. One boy told her that he knew that Mary and Vili had been “dating.” Other kids in the class knew, too.
Some students needed reassurance and consideration and so did their parents. It was a thankless task, juggling emotions, the law, and the loyalty the students felt for Mary Letourneau, but other teachers could see the woman who stepped into room 39 was capable of handling the heavy challenge.
Teachers shook their heads and even laughed when the substitute told them that her students wanted her to dress more like Mary.
“You'd look really cute in a short skirt and a big sweatshirt, tennis shoes, and maybe some bright pink lipstick!” they'd said.
“Thanks for the tip,” she said.
In time, devotion to the disgraced and absent teacher eroded.
“The boys were the first to start calling her names,” one teacher remembered.
* * *
The staff lounge at Shorewood Elementary was not only a retreat from the somber faces that roamed the hallways; it was also a place where they could talk about what they had heard about Mary. All didn't talk openly. Some were closer' to Mary and felt their allegiance to her eroding. They wanted so much for her to get help for her sickness, be cured, hospitalized. Whatever it took to get her better, preferably far from Shorewood. Those who were less invested in a relationship knew when to back off and keep quiet. As public as it all was, for many at the school it was a personal, emotionally charged issue.
Pieces of the puzzle came rapidly together and with each new bit of information came the understanding that whatever had been going on between Mary Letourneau and Vili Fualaau had gone on under everyone's noses.
When the teachers learned of the marina incident, the date reminded one of the group of the last day of school in June 1996. That night the Shorewood graduating sixth-graders convened with friends, parents, and other students to celebrate the end of the school year. As had been the case for several years, the event was held at a local swim club. One teacher who was also a Shorewood parent remembered something about Mary.
“One of the parents brought a karaoke machine and Vili was there, he was the star, singing. This one girl in particular was hanging all over him… and probably ten minutes before the party is set to end, in runs Mary bouncing around and looking and looking. And I remember her looking and she saw Vili and this girl singing—and she was just so giddy.”
Here I am!
“That was the night of the marina incident,” the teacher recalled.
Another teacher recalled a sixth-grade field trip in which the bus had been kept waiting because Mary and Vili and another boy had lagged behind before showing up, skipping merrily along, arm in arm. A teacher told her that it was “not appropriate behavior.”
And a teacher remarked about the time Mary Kay was seen “slow-dancing with Vili” during recess. The teacher told Mary Kay to knock it off.
“It didn't look right,” the teacher said.
The investigation by the police and a worried school district continued in the days after Mary Kay Letourneau's arrest in the school parking lot. Information came slowly. Vili's buddies had known about the sexual relationship since the summer before seventh grade. One boy told police investigators how Mary Kay had picked Vili up one night in her van to have sex near some apartments in White Center. Another time, the kid said, Mary Kay got Vili from the Boys and Girls Club for sex.