Years later, Mary Newby struggled to get a fix on the attitude of the pregnant teacher in the parking lot that evening. The word that came was “bravado.”
“There was almost a sense of bravado, that everything would work out.”
Mary Newby continued to worry about her former student teacher and the impact of her relationship with the artistic Samoan boy.
“When she finally comes face-to-face with the fact that they aren't going to be together by his choice, what's going to happen with her?”
Chapter 42
OTHER INQUIRIES WITH lawyers had gone nowhere for both Mary Kay and Steve. After her arrest Mary Kay hired David Gehrke, and Steve hired a lawyer of his own, a young Tacoman named Greg Grahn. Steve met Grahn through a referral from his wife, Susan, also an Alaska Airlines employee. At the time, Steve was looking for advice, not necessarily a quick divorce. There were too many issues to be resolved. Mary Kay's criminal arrest, her pregnancy, and the foreclosure of the house in Normandy Park all loomed to cast a pall of uncertainty on people who needed resolution.
More than anything in those early days of the criminal case, Steve Letourneau was embarrassed about the attention his wife and marriage were getting because of her involvement with her student. He met with Greg Grahn in March, shortly after the arrest of his wife.
The thirty-two-year-old lawyer had practiced both civil and criminal law, and had even worked on a couple of child molestation cases. He saw Mary Kay as a pedophile. He wondered how Mary Kay could have hoodwinked Steve. But after conferring with his new client, it became clear that Steve hadn't been tricked by anyone. He simply didn't see the truth because it was so incomprehensible.
“Initially, Steve looked at it as Mary Kay was just taking this pupil under her wing. He thought, 'Hey, it was inappropriate. Teachers shouldn't be having students at the home. That was kind of uncommon, a bit odd. He never really thought it was sexual.”
Why would it ever be?
Steve told Greg Grahn that he believed his wife was starving for attention and Vili was providing what she needed to feel good about herself.
“He thought with Mary Kay maybe it was more of an ego-patting thing for her, that she was just intoxicated that somebody else was finding her to be such a wonderful person.”
Steve said he had tried to be a better husband, a more supportive person. By then it didn't matter. Mary Kay was getting everything she needed from Vili.
Those who knew Mary Kay Letourneau knew she loved the telephone more than face-to-face conversations. She thought nothing of calling to chat about one subject and ending up talking about a million others. During the time she was pregnant, Ellen Douglas was on her calling list. And throughout the conversations that the two shared, schoolteacher Ellen would take notes so that she could share what had been said with her husband, Daniel.
One of the reasons she made notes was simply because Mary Kay seemed so out of it, was so far gone at times, that it was difficult to remember every tangent that she drifted to.
Though facing treatment or prison and pregnant with a former sixth-grade student's baby, Mary Kay didn't seem to grasp that her world—her old world—had come to a complete halt.
She talked about staying in the house after Steve was gone.
“Well, we'll have to see what happens,” Ellen said.
Mary, come on and wake up. You don't have the money. You're being foreclosed on.
She talked about continuing her teaching career.
“Uh-huh,” Ellen said.
You're in denial. Life will not go on as it did. You won't have your children.
Ellen just couldn't tell Mary Kay the silent responses that went through her mind. It would be cruel. It was unnecessary. It wouldn't have helped her fragile state one iota.
“She was pregnant and life was tumbling on without her and things were happening and it was too late. No matter what I said to her it wouldn't have made a difference,” she said later.
Whenever Ellen Douglas would hang up, by the look on her face and the duration of the call, Daniel Douglas knew his schoolteacher wife had been talking to their troubled neighbor. Ellen referred to her notes and shared what the two had discussed, but not all of it. Though she and Daniel were very close, some of it just seemed too personal to disclose. She shared nothing that was said with anyone at the school where she taught.
Of everything they discussed, one issue seemed paramount to Mary Kay. She frequently referred to Steve's callous treatment of her.
“She needed people to know that he wasn't a goody-goody,” Ellen said later.
Chapter 43
IF ANYONE OWNED the Mary Kay Letourneau story—outside of the principals involved, of course—it was television reporter Karen O'Leary. In many ways it was a good fit. Not only because Karen was an excellent reporter with a surprising reserve of sympathy for the teacher, but also because the two shared some common ground.