“Shorts, skirts, big baggy sweatshirts. She looked very cute. She looked to me like a teenager,” she said later.
Mary would discuss nothing but her pregnancies, and child-rearing concerns, with another teacher sharing a similar personal load.
Another was given insight into her marital problems.
In time, even one of her most devoted friends on the staff would begin to wonder if all had been duped by the pretty blond woman in room 39. Had they ever really known her at all?
“A sex offender's forte is deception and knowing one's audience and you play to them what you want them to see. And if you have to play different parts for different people you can do that. And they lay a blanket on whatever's behind; whatever they don't want you to see,” the teacher said later.
John Schmitz arrived in Seattle less than a week after his daughter called him from Beth Adair's after the arrest. He brought her a car, an Audi Fox, and the promise that he'd stand by her. Mary Kay and Steve showed him the “peaceful coexistence” contract that had been drafted by the Jesuit priest that she and Steve had consulted when they first discovered she was pregnant by Vili.
“It was a contract based on respect for each other and the understanding that what must be done is done in the best interests of the children. There would be no reconciliation and the priest said he wouldn't even pray for a miracle to have us reconcile. We would transition the children to their new life, divorce, and they'd remain with me. I was their mother, their primary parent. After my father left, Steve ripped up the contract. He accused the priest of being in conspiracy with my family.”
“You won't get your way this time,” he said.
Chapter 41
HAD THERE REALLY ever been a graceful way out of the mess that Mary Kay and Steve Letourneau had made of their lives? It was a question that, once Mary Kay was arrested, Kate Stewart could never really answer with certainty. For a time—through Christmas, New Year's, Mary Kay's birthday, even the Valentine's Day a couple of weeks before the arrest—it seemed that there was, in fact, a little room for the concept that things could be worked out quietly and discreetly. But Kate felt that in the long run, it didn't seem possible that “Plan A” (as her former roommate described it) would ever really work: Steve and Mary Kay would divorce, she would quit her job, and Vili would move in with her and the kids. And they'd be one big happy family.
Plan B hadn't been any better. It was even more preposterous. Steve and Mary Kay would move away to raise Vili's baby in a new town, far from the prying eyes of those who knew them. It wasn't that Steve didn't love Mary Kay enough to do that; Kate and others knew that he worshiped her. But it wasn't up to him alone. His family would never stand for it and his ego wouldn't allow for accepting his wife's student's baby as his own. Once that little black-haired baby was born, it would be all over at the Letourneaus'.
Sometimes, Kate understood, people just can't look the other way. Even if it is in the best interest of everyone involved.
Kate could only hope that the divorce between Mary Kay and Steve would be swift and involve as little finger-pointing as possible. Finger-pointing would lead to defensiveness; defensiveness would lead to nothing but trouble. In reality, this was a divorce for which there was plenty of blame to go around.
But if Steve Letourneau was in turmoil, much of it his own doing. And certainly, there had to be a measure of guilt thrown into the mix. Steve hadn't been exactly faithful. If he was smart, he'd be the last one to throw any stones.
“The marriage had broken down to the point where she didn't even know where he was,” Kate said later. “They could probably have swapped sex stories if they had to or were in the mood to at home. It was out in the open between them. At one point he was going to be gone and told her that he was going to see a girlfriend.”
“Now that's all right? You're okay with this?” Steve asked.
“Fine,” she answered.
But it wasn't fine. Mary Kay had reached out to a sixth-grader. Yes, Kate knew, over the years there had been transgressions on both sides. There had always been the understanding, however, that when the night was done, both Steve and Mary Kay would return home. If Steve hadn't strayed, maybe Mary Kay wouldn't have been so inclined to do the same.
During the weeks and months before she and Vili crossed the line to the point of no return, Mary Kay Letourneau was falling apart and her husband was seemingly oblivious.
When Kate and Mary Kay started talking after the two-year hiatus of their friendship, the subject of sex with Steve came up. Mary Kay said that it had never been that great with her husband. The revelation surprised Kate. She had always assumed that sex was the glue that bonded their marriage. But it was more than just mundane sex that troubled her. Steve wasn't the man of Mary Kay's dreams. He had no conviction. No passion.