“I don't think he's been telling you the whole truth about pleading guilty,” she told Mary Kay during a phone call that summer. “Don't go there. Once you go there, you are eliminating so many other things that are possibilities that could help you later on.”
Mary Kay wasn't sure. Her head was spinning and she told Kate that she was on overload. She wanted to trust David Gehrke to do the right thing and he didn't think there were any other options to discuss.
“Excuse me,” Kate shot back, “but you're paying him. It is his duty to lay all of the options on the table for you to choose.”
Kate named some options that would be lost if she took the SSOSA treatment. She'd lose the chance to be with all of her children, lose the chance to nurse Audrey, lose any kind of house-arrest program. She'd be giving herself over to people who thought she was some kind of boy molester, a freak. As David Gehrke outlined it to his client and to her friends it was either SSOSA treatment or prison. If she didn't plead guilty there'd be no SSOSA.
Far away as she was from Seattle, Kate felt she could see things very clearly, and she was worried. She was convinced there had to be a better way.
Mary Kay had needed a psychologist who would help her out of the mess she had made of her life without ruining her future. Friends helping her were outraged that David Gehrke seemed to let the prosecution roll over him when it came to selecting evaluators. It just didn't make sense to Kate or Michelle that the prosecution had to approve evaluators that were supposed to help the defense.
“Most unheard-of thing I've ever heard,” Kate said some months later. “All kinds of things went on like that, and David would advise her and tell her, 'That's just the way it works.' That's bullshit!”
It frustrated her even more when word came back that the prosecution was dismissive of a finding of a bipolar disorder.
“Then the prosecution accuses her of personality profile shopping. That she was just trying to get the right one. Aren't they doing that to nail her?” Kate asked.
Mary Kay Letourneau had increasing doubts about David Gehrke, but she hated the idea of ditching him in the eleventh hour. He kept telling everyone she was ill and she hated being portrayed that way in the media. An article in the Orange County Register ticked her off, and when he said he was quoted out of context, Mary Kay said context or not, words like “obsessed” and “mentally ill” carry weight alone. Later, she conceded that she had even told him what her friends were saying.
“Don't prove them right, David,” she said. “Will you start showing them you are what I believe you are?”
She summed it up later: “He did his best, but it wasn't good enough.”
Chapter 56
MARY KAY FIDDLED for what seemed like hours, with her hair, her clothes. While Amber Fish watched Audrey, the subject of growing media interest ironed and reironed outfit after outfit for herself and her baby. For Amber, it was oddly like old times back at Carriage Row. Mary Kay was running around the Normandy Park house trying to find the right outfit to wear, ironing and rejecting and making nervous jokes about it. But, of course, this wasn't old times. Steve was gone. All the Letourneau children were gone.
A short time later, a photographer from the Seattle Times arrived to take pictures for the article Ron Fitten was writing. Mary Kay settled on the simplest outfit and the veteran photographer agreed. She wore an oversize white T-shirt and blue sweat pants; her infant, a white T-shirt and diaper.
The shoot went well. The Times photographer suggested that the new mother sit on the hardwood floor in front of some boxes—all packed up with no place to go. Even before the shutter closed, the poignancy of the scene was heartbreaking. Mary Kay was swallowed by her T-shirt, swallowed by the boxes around her… alone with the baby—the only thing left in her life.
Before the photographer packed up to leave, Mary Kay asked if she would do her the favor of taking some personal pictures of Audrey in a little red Samoan dress that Soona had given her. Mary Kay rolled her eyes at the ruffled and lace-trimmed garment. She told Amber that she thought it was “the most ugly thing, but we'll do it to make her happy.”
The photographer reluctantly agreed. Amber thought the photographer seemed “scared” about doing the favor.
“You can't tell anyone,” she said.
“She took the film out right away and gave it to Mary Kay and said, I can get in so much trouble for this.' “
Mary Kay laughed a little. There wasn't much else she could do.
“It isn't like I can go out to JC Penney's to get them taken,” she said.
Even though Katie Hogden would later say there were times when she would break down and cry for no reason, deep down she always knew there was a reason. The reason would emerge after the sobs that shook her body, after she had buried her face into a sodden pillowcase. The reason was painfully plain. It was always about her teacher, her tears seeded by the scandal that had taken a life of its own.