Steve Letourneau, as his wife presented it to Kate, went whichever way the wind blew. When he was with Mary Kay, “they'd be sleeping in the same bed crying together” and trying to find a way to save their marriage. When he talked with his family he whined about the nightmare his wife had caused.
“He has no backbone,” Kate said. “He is not strong. That's the whole reason she could never love him. He doesn't know his own mind.”
Steve Letourneau loved Mary Kay—which was the strangest part of the whole tragedy surrounding their broken marriage. Though he strayed, though he pushed her around when she was pregnant, it had more to do with his badly bruised ego than hatred for Mary Kay. Mary Kay told her friend that her father had put it in very simple terms.
“How do you expect him to handle it? He's been upstaged by a thirteen-year-old!”
Kate understood where Steve was coming from. “He never wanted a divorce. He loved her. If she called up and said, 'Oh, my God, I made such a horrible mess. I need you so much. We just have to get the kids and move to Canada,' he'd be right there.”
Kate Stewart was another who just couldn't accept Steve and Mary Kay living together once things went from civil to ugly. She was worried for Mary Kay when the violence started to escalate between the two. Mary Kay was pregnant, in a state of confusion, and her husband was hurt, bitter, and humiliated. Not a good combination for resolution or even a truce. Mary Kay told Kate that alcohol had been thrown in the mix and she was even more worried. Steve made frequent trips down the hill to the shopping center for big cans of Foster's. When their car was out of commission, he'd walk the long walk down the hill to the shopping center.
One time Kate overheard a shouting match between father and son when she was on the phone talking to Mary Kay.
“Get out of there! Leave her alone, you big drunk!” Steven's eleven-year-old voice called out in the background.
Some nights Mary Kay couldn't take the yelling and the shoving. She grabbed a blanket and a pillow went to sleep in the van.
Kate could only wonder if the nightmare Mary Kay was living through would really be worth it. Somehow, as incomprehensible as it seemed, Kate understood that her former college roommate loved teenagers. She also recognized that Mary Kay's feelings for the boy were stronger than they had ever been for Steve Letourneau. Yet Kate couldn't help but play the devil's advocate during their phone conversations from Seattle to Chicago. She pressed the notion that although Mary Kay and Vili were “in love,” they were from two very different worlds.
“If you are at a black-tie cocktail party and Vili's next to you and there's a lot of politicians and all these people in the room—people in high-powered places. You're in an arena that you are very comfortable in, how will you feel?” Kate asked.
There was no hesitation from Mary Kay. She said she'd be fine.
Her friend pushed harder. “You won't worry about Vili?”
“I've spent my whole life worrying about what my husband was going to say when he opened his mouth; I can't tell you how comfortable I'd be with Vili. He can hold a candle to anyone in the room. I would never worry about what comes out his mouth,” she said.
Several weeks had transformed the tail end of another gray Western Washington winter into a wonderful, wet, and warm springtime. Gregory Heights teacher Mary Newby found herself at an executive board meeting at the Highline Education Association offices near the airport. An HEA director told her that Mary Letourneau was there taking care of her pension and other matters related to her employment as a teacher for the district.
“If you want to talk to her, this might be a good opportunity,” the director said.
The veteran teacher was torn. She wanted to see her former student teacher, but felt she'd get teary-eyed and start to cry. No matter what had been said about Mary Kay Letourneau, it could never shake the sympathy that so many shared. How could it? Mary Newby was like so many others; what she had seen firsthand was a gifted teacher and devoted mother, a far cry from a predatory monster.
Finally, Mary Newby gathered her strength and went out to the parking lot and marched right over to the younger woman. She put her arms around her. It was a moment Mary Newby will never forget.
“I asked her how she was doing, at that point I felt she was on very, very thin ice, emotionally.”
Mary Letourneau, still pregnant, didn't seem upset.
“I'm fine,” she said. “Everything's going to be okay.”
It was almost as if she had found it within herself to comfort the comforter.
“You wrote to me, didn't you?” Mary Letourneau asked.
“Yes.”
Mary Kay smiled. “I thought that you did. I received several hundred notes and just couldn't answer all of them.”