If Loving You Is Wrong (26 page)

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.

“They came back in around ten minutes,” the kid said.

Chapter 40

AFTER MARY LETOURNEAU was gone, Shorewood teachers who knew her were left with snapshots of memory they couldn't reconcile with all the recollections percolating in the staff room. One young teacher who knew Mary only casually would never forget her impression of the teacher just the day before the Highline school superintendent came to break the news. She hadn't seen Mary much in the previous weeks—Mary hadn't been in the staff room.

“I remember looking at her and thinking how beautiful she looked. She looked so happy. She was pregnant; she was radiant. I just remember thinking, Wow, that's great.”

The day after the news came was intensely disconcerting for the young teacher. The allegations were preposterous.

“She couldn't have done anything,” she said to another. “How could someone who knew she was in so much trouble be so serene?”

“Well, you never know,” the other offered.

Wrong
, she thought.

Almost two years later, tears would come to her eyes as she recalled the memory.

“To find out that she had all this in her head and pretended to be so fine. That's stmck me ever since.”

What was she thinking? How was she able to cover such a devastating reality?

Another teacher who shared lunch duty with Mary Kay the day of her arrest was also stuck by the deception, the denial—whatever it was. While they were helping out with the students, Mary Kay told the teacher how excited she and Steve were about welcoming their fifth child to their family in the spring.

“She said they had both come from large families and had wanted a fifth child. Other people told them they should stop at four.”

It bothered teachers at Shorewood when the media proclaimed knowledge of a foot-long waiting list for parents who wanted to get their children into Mrs. Letourneau's class, but could not be accommodated. There was no waiting list.

“That isn't how it is done at Shorewood,” a teacher said later.

In fact, another said, “There were parents who made sure their students did
not
end up in her class. They wanted more structure.”

A few parents told a colleague of Mary Kay's that they noticed that sons, more so than daughters, “were not pleased with her as a teacher. The boys did not necessarily consider her their favorite teacher. But the ones who had girls had that little friendship connection.... ”

Some parents said they never felt welcome in room 39, and again, more often than not, those who got a cold shoulder were the parents of boys. Those who had girls with whom Mary had some kind of friendship connection said they helped out because they felt “needed.”

As time passed, some teachers speculated about their colleague and her alleged crime.

Could she have abused any others?

One Shorewood teacher couldn't rule it out, though she thought it was unlikely.

It was at this Des Moines, Wash., marina where police discovered Mary Kay Letourneau and Vili Fualaau in the teacher's van in the early morning hours of June 19, 1997. Highline School District officials learned of the disturbing incident, but since no one was charged with a crime, did nothing.
(Author)

Twelve-year-old Vili Fualaau was a popular kid in Mrs. Letourneau's sixth-grade class. Teacher and student shared their first kiss not long after this photo was taken in Shorewood's classroom 39.
(Katie Hogden)

Mary Kay Letourneau, pregnant with her student's baby and her world falling apart, was all smiles when she posed for this class picture in the fall of 1997. Her baggage handler husband Steve Letourneau had already discovered proof of the sexual relationship between his wife and her student.
(Jose Avila)

Mary Kay's was the only bedroom with an ocean view in the Schmitz home on exclusive Spyglass Hill in Corona del Mar, Calif. Family friends wondered what role the tragedy of little Philip, who drowned in the pool, might have played in Mary Kay's life.
(Author)

Like father, like daughter – John Schmitz and favorite daughter “Cake” shared many similarities. Both had two children by students. Both published memoirs.
(Author)

John Schmitz's ultra-conservative politics brought demonstrators to the Congressman's house. No one would dispute that Mary Kay was her father's staunchest defender.
(Irv Rubin)

Mary Schmitz, lawyer Gloria Allred and Hank Springer as they appeared on KNBC's “Free For All” public affairs television show in the late '70s and early '80s.
(Pat DeAndrea)

Not long after it was learned that he had fathered two children with Carla Stuckle, John Schmitz, disgraced and no longer a viable political candidate, lived in this trailer park in Tustin – a mile from his mistress's home.
(Author)