If Loving You Is Wrong (37 page)

BURIEN TEACHER'S SEX WITH A YOUNG STUDENT SHATTERS THE BOY'S FAMILY, AND HERS

It was a sympathetic portrayal by a reporter who had spent time with both perpetrator and victim. She said she was sorry. She loved the boy. It was clear there was enough tragedy to go around, and along with the photographs of Mary Kay and her baby, it begged the question: What purpose would be served by sending her to prison? It was the kind of article that won awards, changed public opinion, and caught the attention of Hollywood bottom feeders. It wasn't skin deep.

And oddly, though there was a time when he would announce that he was writing a book about the Letourneau story, Ron Fitten's byline became missing in action.

Kate Stewart would later shake her head at the reason she felt Ron Fitten had been dumped off the story of a lifetime. He appeared too close to the subject, and because of his “on the inside” perspective, very sympathetic. He had become a confidant of Mary Kay's and nearly a surrogate father to Vili.

During a marathon conversation with Kate that lasted several hours, the reporter told her that what had happened between Mary Kay and Vili Fualaau could not have happened between any other two people. That kind of message didn't go over well at the paper.

“This thing is so big politically. He's not ready to leave his job... you had a sympathetic writer on the case... and off.”

The first wave of television movie producers came the summer that Angie and Amber Fish helped Mary Kay Letourneau take care of her infant daughter, Audrey. The wave was small—and nothing like it would become in the months that would follow—as Hollywood beat a path to Normandy Park, Washington. It was an interesting time. The twins felt Mary Kay courted the attention as much as she denied her interest in it. She put up blankets over the sliding glass doors to shield them, yet there were times when the media caught her peering through her temporary partition.

When the girls asked why she wanted to get involved in a television movie, Mary Kay shrugged.

“It will be done anyway,” she said, “I might as well have some input into it.” She even teased Amber about casting Shannen Doherty as Angie.

“Because she's such a bitch,” she said teasingly.

Amber countered that with an idea about who should play the lead role.

“Meg Ryan is you, Mary Kay.”

They both laughed.

“I just can't wait until the movie comes out!” Mary Kay said with a laugh, as if none of it really mattered to her. Meg Ryan or not.

Yet she continued to talk about the television deal's viability and how the whole world would want to watch it. It was a modern
Romeo and Juliet
, a cross-generation saga, a cross-cultural tale. She worried if any movie could capture the essence of her love story. She was also quite hopeful that the film would be a big moneymaker.

“If anything comes out of this,” she said one day, perched on her hide-a-bed command post, remote control in hand, “I want each one of my children to have a trust fund for college. Maybe this will even put the boy through school.”

Angie didn't see the point of worrying about the boy and how he might profit.

What? Who cares about him? What about the others? she thought
.

The delays were over. Everyone in the little Normandy Park neighborhood knew that, as part of a plea agreement, Mary Letourneau was going to jail that first week in August, though no one knew for how long. Some neighbors had avoided her for the mere fact that she had been dubbed a criminal; still others, like Tina Bernstein, had kept their distance because of the awkwardness of the situation. Here was a woman they had known, cared about, and somewhere along the way she had become someone else. A predator. A child rapist. A criminal. For those who knew her at all, none of those labels were appropriate—or even plausible.

The night before she was going to plead guilty and more than likely go to jail, Mary Letourneau walked over to the Bernsteins'. A certified letter for Tina had been put into the Letourneaus' mailbox and Mary brought it over. Tina could see how the events of the summer had been quite tough on Mary. She was tired and thin. Coming next door had been hard for her.

The meeting was awkward. There had been so much silence since it all started, Mary hadn't talked to Lee in months. Tina Bernstein had wanted to come over to tell Mary that she still cared about her and her children.

Tina's voice started to break. “I'm so sorry, but I didn't know what to say or do,” she said. “Every time something new comes out, I'm speechless.”

Mary started to cry, too.

“I know,” she said. “I've been putting a lot of people through some pain and confusion. I'm sorry.”

The women stood there as Mary apologized and tried to explain what had happened between her and Vili.

“She wanted me to know where she stopped seeing him as a boy and where she started seeing him as a man. She was very confused, too,” Tina Bernstein recalled later.

It was last-minute, as always, but Mary Kay called the Fish girls to see if their brother-in-law could do her hair on August 5. She had two big reasons: there was an interview the next day with
Dateline NBC
at the Gehrkes' house, and the day after that she was going to jail. The hairdresser called all over the Southcenter shopping area to find a salon that would stay open until he could get there to pick up the right supplies Mary Kay Letourneau needed to get her hair done—cut
and
foiled.

“It might be the last time I get my hair done for a while,” she said.

Late that night, Mary left Audrey with Soona and returned to Carriage Row, parking in front of her old condo, and went to the Fish home. She tried to appear upbeat, joking and telling Amber and Angie and their sister, Lisa, that everything was going to work out. One of the girls had the new issue of
Cosmopolitan
and read aloud a “love test.” From her makeshift hair salon chair in the kitchen, Mary Kay joined in.

“I haven't been able to goof around in a long time,” she said, thanking them for the diversion.

As they did the test, Mary Kay talked about Vili and how the two shared a special relationship that defied all reason. She said she was sorry for the pain their romance had caused so many people, and though she was going to plead guilty in court, it was a legal tactic, not real.

“The only crime I'm guilty of is betraying Steve,” she said.

When her hair was done, the girls walked her outside. There was an awkward moment of silence. No one knew what to say.

“I'll see you in seven,” she said and laughed before getting into her Fox.

Amber and Angie talked after their friend and former neighbor drove away. Neither one thought Mary Kay was going away to prison; it would be just a little jail time.
But not seven years
. There was no way.

Early in the morning of the day of her interview with
Dateline
, Mary Kay Letourneau had been on the phones trying to locate her children. She knew they were en route with their father on a Northwest Airlines flight from Washington, D.C., to Anchorage, where Steve had taken permanent residence after staying with the Gardners that spring. She worked the phone like a desperate mother or a telemarketer because Steve would not tell her the flight time or number and her sister Liz wasn't even answering her phone. She paged her son over airport P.A. systems across the country. Minneapolis. Detroit. Chicago.

Finally one airline employee (“An angel, one of my angels,” Mary Kay said later) broke the rules and gave her the flight number. Steve Letourneau and the four children were listed on a flight arriving in SeaTac at 11:02 that morning. With a Nordstom bag in one hand and a sack of presents in another, Mary Kay frantically found her way to the gate. For a moment, after she had gone to the wrong gate, she thought she had missed them and started to cry.

“Jacqueline saw me... ” Mary Kay said later, tears coming to her eyes. “She put her arms up and called for her mommy. She melted into my arms. They all did. Steve looked at me and said, 'She knew you'd be here. She was calling your name before we got off the plane.' My eyes said, F. U., but I said, 'And what if I wasn't? What if I hadn't been here?' “

Those two hours at the airport would be the last time Mary Kay would see her children.

The next day, August 7, 1997, a haltingly repentant Mary Kay Letourneau joined the inmate population of the King County Jail. Among the prisoners there, she was by far the most educated, best mannered, and most beautiful. Just as she appeared to Karen O'Leary and other news reporters back in March when she first walked into a courtroom with her hair held up in a barrette and wearing a gray maternity dress, she didn't look like she was the type of person who belonged in jail. But there she was. David Gehrke had told the court earlier in the day that she was sorry.

“She's a very good person who did a horrible thing,” he said.

And there she would stay, pumping her breasts for milk for baby Audrey, awaiting sentencing that would drag on for months as doctors, lawyers, and people she didn't know argued over her fate: treatment as a deviant or more than seven years in prison as a criminal.

Chapter 57

AUGUST 21, 1997, was Vili Fualaau's coming-out party. Sort of. On that morning the boy and his mother, Soona, appeared on NBC's
Today
show and gave the world the first glimpse, albeit obscured, of the boy behind the woman. Karen O'Leary missed the segment that morning, but the KIRO-TV reporter caught excerpts of the interview on the NBC affiliate's noon news show. News director Bill Lord told Karen to get down to White Center to dig up an interview. The boy? His mother? Mary Kay? Gehrke?

“Anybody,” he said.

Karen O'Leary and cameraman Tom Matsuzawa made their way to south Seattle, but once there, Karen realized she had left the Samoan family's name and address back at the station. She went to see Nick Latham at the Highline School District.

“She showed up at Highline, with her cell phone, and told me, 'Bill Lord told me I've got to get an interview with Vili, help me find him,'” recalled the public relations officer. It made for an awkward moment and the beginning of a strain on their friendship. Nick couldn't tell Karen anything; the district and the Fualaaus had made it clear that legal action was a possibility if they disclosed information about Vili. Moreover, he wondered why she needed it from him anyway. All the information she wanted was on the charging papers filed by King County anyway. Name, address, probably phone number, too.

“I can't help you find him,” he said finally.

It was time for a Coke and plan B. Karen went to a nearby Burger King.

“Do you know that boy who was involved with Mary Letourneau?” she asked a group of teens hanging around the fast food restaurant.

The kids didn't flinch or hesitate.

“Oh, yeah, Vili... Buddha,” said one.

“I know his telephone number,” added another. “Here it is.”

It was that easy at Burger King and it probably would have been just as easy at Taco Time. The teens admitted that it was common knowledge that Vili was the mystery boy involved with Mary Kay Letourneau. Everyone, it seemed, knew.

Some secret, Karen thought. Kids aren't dumb. They are observant. Everyone knew this boy
.

The house at White Center was modest and rundown. Karen O'Leary left the cameraman in the car and knocked on the door. Vili answered. He looked like a boy of thirteen, maybe fourteen. To the veteran reporter, Mary Kay Letourneau's boyfriend/victim did not look like a mature young man, as the lawyers had tried to portray him. He was small, gangly, and self-conscious like a kid. Karen introduced herself, though she needn't have. Vili immediately knew who she was and said so. She said she'd seen the
Today
show interview and the two talked about the story.

“Now that you've done national TV, we'd like to interview you for a local story.”

“Okay,” he said.

They talked a bit longer and Vili excused himself and went back inside. Karen could hear him converse with a couple of others. Later Vili would tell her that his sister, Leni, and his aunt were home.

“We said we'd disguise his face using pixalization. He knew what that was,” Karen said later. “We talked for five or ten minutes.”

Then Karen asked to use the restroom.

“I needed to use the restroom, is all,” she explained later. “It wasn't any kind of a ruse. I'm a television reporter. I didn't have a camera with me. What difference would it have made that I was inside? He was already talking to me.”

A few minutes later, he brought out baby Audrey to show to the reporter and the cameraman. The baby was very cute and they asked if they could take her picture.

Vili said yes at first, but later changed his mind.

“I don't think my mom would like that,” he said.

They took video of some of his artwork, the bassinet, and a car seat. When it came time for the interview, Vili considered the most appropriate venue. First the inside of the house was all right, then he thought the porch would be better. Finally, he said it would be best to tape it at nearby Hicks Lake Park.