If Loving You Is Wrong (33 page)

“Steven knew. He knew from the beginning. He knew everything,” Amber said later.

Ellen Douglas once called herself a “Que Sera Sera” type person. Stuff happens. It just does. The idea that a teacher and a student could fall in love was not so impossible for Ellen to understand. She could see how it might happen with one huge reservation. The age difference was too bizarre to accept. She just couldn't see it. Maybe in a high school setting, but not an elementary teacher and her young student.

Whenever she tried to rationalize what had happened between Mary Kay and Vili Fualaau, she always came back to the impact on the children involved.

She never considered Vili part of that group.

“That child was never a child like Mary Kay's son and my son,” she told a friend. “That was not a little boy playing Legos and G.I. Joe [action figures] and wearing little Ninja costumes and running around the neighborhood like our two little boys were.”

Vili Fualaau, as Ellen saw him, was not in the same league as other kids that shared his chronological age—at least none that she knew. It seemed that the seventh grader did what he wanted, whenever he wanted to. Obviously, with a father in prison, his family life was outside the norm of suburban Normandy Park kids. Since he was too young to drive, someone must have brought him over to the Letourneaus and left him there—at all hours and overnight. Ellen was convinced that members of the boy's family were aware that something was going on between Vili and Mary Kay.

“His family knew,” she contended.

It also became apparent to Ellen and others that a true double standard was evident in the Mary Kay Letourneau saga. The fact that it was a woman perpetrator and a young male victim, though novel and shocking, probably had less lasting impact than if the roles had been reversed.

“A thirteen-year-old girl getting pregnant is a heck of a lot different physically than a thirteen-year-old boy getting someone else pregnant. The physical difference of what happens to that child's body is different. It is a double standard. We are not equal.”

Introspection comes easily to a teenage girl's heart, but so does the willingness to believe in someone or something when the most obvious evidence points in another direction.

Katie Hogden had felt so very close to Mary and Vili and had seen the signs of their closeness—the looks, the fleeting touch of their hands—that she was not surprised later when she learned the two had been intimate or had “hooked up.” It was always in the back of the sensitive girl's mind like a closed door, she later imagined when she tried to explain it. A door that she had chosen to leave locked and boarded up. Always there, but always hidden. For Katie, keeping that door closed probably meant never getting hurt.

Later, Katie considered that all that she believed had been going on was a teacher trying to save a boy from his family, his past, and a future that was dark and without room for all that he could be.

“She wanted to help him because he needed the help and she needed the help. He could help her and she could help him. And their souls just like matched. He was her best friend and she was his best friend.
Look at them talking... it was just perfect. Once-in-a-lifetime thing”

Steve Letourneau wanted the whole thing to end. His wife had flung their dirty laundry all over the country and the sooner it was put to rest, the better. He told his lawyer that while he wanted closure, he didn't want Mary Kay to go to jail. Greg Grahn told Steve that he doubted such an outcome from the very beginning. He was sure as a firsttime offender she'd get a treatment program. Even so, he had doubts as the summer progressed that Mary Kay Letourneau was really a good candidate for any kind of special program. He told Steve that he doubted she was a threat to their children and that she was unlikely to be involved with any boy other than Vili.

Greg felt his client's wife had some kind of emotional problem that prevented her from remaining in control.

“It wasn't a love-at-first-sight type of thing. It was a drawn-out process where Mary Kay could have just drawn the line: 'You're a thirteen-year-old child and it's not going to happen.' ”

Greg Grahn was also alarmed by Mary Kay's insistence that she was still in love with Vili. She appeared to be using love as a defense.

“Honesty is a defense of slander so love should be a defense of child molestation. 'You can't put me in jail, because I really do love him.' That's just not the way the law works.”

Chapter 50

SHE DREADED THE day that she'd pick up the phone and it would be Steve Letourneau calling. Even though Secret Squirrel Linda Gardner had done what she felt was right, she knew that her actions led to the breakup of her husband's cousin's home, happy or not. Such as it was. Kyle Gardner had been in contact with Steve not long after the arrest and he had kept his wife up-to-date.

But it wasn't until April that the phone rang at ten P.M. and Steve's voice was on the line. Fear overwhelmed her and her heart sank. Before she could say anything—and she didn't know what it would be anyway—Steve took up the slack on his end of the line.

“Linda,” he said, “I just want to let you know that you got me out of this nightmare and I want to thank you for it.”

Linda didn't know what to say.

“Yeah. You want to talk to Kyle?” she asked, before setting down the receiver and looking for her husband.

Over the next few days the two would talk more. Linda listening at first, then offering advice. She thought it was ridiculous that Steve was still living there with his pregnant-by-a-sixth-grader wife. And why was he staying? The place was being foreclosed. It wasn't as though he was going to be living there after the law did whatever it was going to do with his wife.

She understood from talking with Steve and Kyle that things were getting violent in Normandy Park.

“You've got to get out of the house,” she said during one of their conversations that spring. “Come here and stay with us. If you don't you're going to get thrown in jail.”

Steve finally admitted that Secret Squirrel was right. It would be better than hanging around while Mary Kay had her baby.

And while her own mother-in-law would not forgive her, it seemed that once everything was out in the open among members of Steve Letourneau's family, Linda was not completely alone. Steve's mother and grandmother both made calls of support to thank her for taking care of the Mary Kay problem.

She knew Mary Kay and Steve hadn't kept the cleanest house. Linda Gardner recalled the time one of their children was missing at Carriage Row and it was discovered that the toddler had fallen asleep in a pile of debris on the sofa. Linda remembered tiptoeing through the clutter, but she didn't think that was as bad as what her husband Kyle described when he helped Steve Letourneau move from Normandy Park to their home in Bonney Lake just before Mary Kay had her baby. It wasn't just a case of packing boxes and moving them to storage. According to her husband, more than a half-dozen trips to the dump were necessary.

“They even threw away a couch,” Linda said later. “Steve had absolutely nothing when he left that house. It was all trash. Kyle couldn't believe how bad it was.”

And yet Steve and Mary Kay had always seemed so neat. Linda couldn't figure it out.

Something's not right. Not right with her. Not right with Steve. How can you be so filthy at home, but when you are around everybody you don't have a scrap of dirt on you... you're perfect?

She asked Steve about it not long after he moved in with the Gardners that spring.

“He told me that he would come home from work and he just gave up, because she would do nothing. She would not do any housework. They had a rat in the house. It was filthy. They lived in filth,” she said later.

Linda didn't want to rub salt into the wound so she kept her mouth shut, but still she wondered, “How was Mary Kay going to bring this baby home to that house? How could these kids live like that?”

When things became more relaxed and she felt she could pry a little, Linda asked her houseguest why he didn't just boot his wife out the door when he confirmed the involvement with the boy.

Steve said he just couldn't. Too many people were involved and he was afraid. He didn't know what to do, how to handle it. He knew she'd go to prison.

“She's the mother of my children,” he repeated.

That didn't wash with Linda.

“When she started having sex with someone the same age as her son, she gave up the right to be the mother of your children,” she retorted.

Later, when Linda would try to describe Steve's state of mind at the time, he was so wishy-washy, so noncommittal, that it was impossible.

“I think that he thought that possibly this would go away and they would be living their lives,” she said.

Over the course of the next few days and weeks, the story would unfold and Linda would become increasingly satisfied that she had done the right thing. Steve said Mary Kay had admonished their children to keep quiet about Vili's overnight visits.

“
If you tell anybody, Mommy will go to prison”

He showed copies of the love letters he had found.

“
So here we are. We had a dream
—
it was a once upon a time—fairy tale story about two people that were meant to become one
—
and did.”

In one missive, Mary Kay lamented how she couldn't show her love for Vili in public, couldn't call him, couldn't show off their devotion to each other...

“But each day something new happens to me and I always want to tell you
... ”

Linda later described some of the letters as depicting Mary Kay and Vili as lovers from another plane, another dimension, and another time. God, they believed, had a plan for them and that plan included a baby. Linda thought the notes were “twisted” and “sick.”

“
I also told them that this wasn't just sex and an accidental baby.”

Later, Linda fumed about the letters: “She knew that this baby would keep them together forever. They set out to make this love child. He was talking about how he loved her, how they were destined to be together and her letters were the same.”

Steve talked about phoning Mary and John Schmitz to tell them what was going on with their daughter long before she was arrested.

“They wanted to get Mary Kay out of Washington and moved to Washington, D.C., but she wouldn't do it,” Linda recalled Steve telling her. “Her mother wouldn't talk to her—totally wrote her off. The dad came out and brought her a car. Then he went back and the parents were not supportive of her at all.”

In time, Linda would piece together what she thought was the real reason why Steve passively sat by as his wife got involved with a student. He was busy with his own affairs. He even fathered a child with one of his flings. And Linda in her best Secret Squirrel mind-set figured that Mary Kay hung that over his head and threatened him.

“
If you tell, if you leave, I will let everybody know about all this stuff.”

And there was Kelly Whalen, too. Kelly, the flight attendant from Alaska Airlines, was the woman with whom Steve was planning his post-Mary Kay future. He talked about Kelly and how wonderful she was and how he couldn't have made it through the ordeal without her. He told Linda they had met on a trip to Puerto Vallarta. He didn't tell her what was going on with his wife, but he wanted out of his loveless marriage.

“I don't agree with him having an affair,” Linda said later. “If my husband ever had one, I'd pull a Lorena Bobbitt on him.”

A girlfriend of Mary Kay Letourneau's who went to the Shorewood open house in the fall of 1996 witnessed a slightly hostile exchange between a man—possibly another teacher—and Mary Kay. She told Linda about it later. According to the friend, she was in the classroom when the man walked up to Mary Kay and said, “You are getting way too close to Vili.”

Then he walked off.

* * *

Whenever they met at his Tacoma office or talked on the phone, divorce lawyer Greg Grahn always found Steve Letourneau to be true to form in one critical regard. Steve remained entrenched in his position that he wouldn't get caught up in the blame game that had been a part of the Mary Kay Letourneau saga from day one. Yes, he was pissed off at his wife for dumping him for a kid. Without a doubt, he was humiliated and bitter, but deep down there was some guilt. Pointing the finger at his dewy-eyed wife was not a good strategy. It only made Steve Letourneau look like a bully kicking her when she was down.

“He couldn't exempt himself from it one hundred percent, anyway,” Greg Grahn said later. “So rather than trying to figure out what percentage is his and what percentage is Mary Kay's, he doesn't want to blame Mary Kay in public.”

He had played a part in what happened, and despite what his critics would say, Steve Letourneau knew it.

“You know,” he admitted to his lawyer, “I could have done things that could have stopped this.”

But Steve wasn't paying attention or he was burying his head in the sand during the months his wife carried on with Vili Fualaau. Maybe he was too wrapped up in what he was doing with his girlfriend to step in and save his wife and family from the inevitable min? Hindsight was a killer, and Steve knew it. According to his lawyer, Steve had seen “hundreds of things” that indicated what had really been going on with Mary Kay and Vili.