Bert sends pregnant Maribeth to the convent

Bert sends pregnant Maribeth to the convent after discovering her pregnancy and rejecting her wish to decide its future on her own terms. He arranges for her to stay at the Sisters of Charity, give birth, and place the baby for adoption, while forbidding contact with her mother and sister until the process is over. The episode makes the convent not simply a destination but the means of a family-imposed separation; its consequences extend into Maribeth’s experience of pregnancy, adoption, and the life she later builds beyond home.

The confrontation at home

Ryan tells Bert about Maribeth’s pregnancy before she has managed to tell her parents herself. Bert returns home angry and summons Maribeth from her room, where Noelle has been listening to records and doing her nails. Their mother is already crying. Bert sends Noelle away and demands to know who fathered the baby. Maribeth refuses to identify him, even as Bert insists on an answer.

Maribeth explains that the baby’s father does not love her and that she does not love him. She had hoped for love, but recognizes that the relationship will not become the future she wanted. Rather than begin her life at sixteen by marrying someone who is marrying another person, she would prefer to have the baby and give it up. She first describes adoption as what she has thought of doing, not as a decision she has already completed; when her father challenges her, she says she does not want to keep the child because she is young, cannot give it what it needs, and also has a right to a life of her own.

Bert treats the pregnancy as a public disgrace and frames the decision around the family’s reputation and honor. He insists that Maribeth cannot remain at home or keep the baby. When she asks whether she must stay with the nuns, she is hoping he will let her remain with her family; instead, he orders her to go to the Sisters of Charity, give up the baby, and return home afterward. His refusal to allow her to stay with her mother and sister makes the punishment extend beyond pregnancy and adoption into immediate isolation.

The arrangement and departure

Bert presents the separation as a condition of returning home: Maribeth must give birth and place the baby for adoption before she can come back. He says he does not want to see her until then and forbids her from seeing her mother or Noelle. Maribeth protests that she has already suffered consequences she cannot undo and asks how much more punishment is required. Bert answers by assigning the judgment to God rather than himself, even as he determines the practical terms of her departure.

He calls the family doctor and the convent, then pays eight hundred dollars for six months of room, board, and expenses, including the delivery. The convent tells him that a doctor and midwife will attend the birth in its infirmary and that the baby will be placed with a loving family. Bert is told that Maribeth can return a week after the birth if there are no complications. He gives her the money in a white envelope and instructs her to tell Noelle that she is going away to school, concealing the pregnancy from her younger sister.

On the following morning, Maribeth tells Bert she loves him as he leaves, but he does not turn back; he raises one hand as he drives away. She rings the convent bell and waits, wanting to go back but knowing she will not be allowed home until the birth and adoption are over. A young nun takes her bag inside and closes the heavy iron door. The departure thus fulfills Bert’s order in both practical and symbolic terms: Maribeth leaves her family home and enters a place where the circumstances of her pregnancy are kept apart from ordinary family life.

Life at the convent

The Sisters of Charity convent is described as cavernous, dark, and gloomy. Maribeth soon discovers that two other pregnant girls are there for the same reason, both from neighboring towns. Their presence offers some company, but their experiences also show the secrecy and limited control built into the process. One, a seventeen-year-old, gives birth on Maribeth’s second day. Her baby girl is quickly taken to the adoptive parents, and the young mother never sees her child. Maribeth regards the process as a hidden, harsh arrangement, as though the girls’ circumstances must be concealed.

The other girl is fifteen and close to giving birth. The girls eat with the nuns and attend chapel prayers and vespers, and they may speak only at certain times. Maribeth learns that the younger girl’s pregnancy was caused by her uncle; she is deeply unhappy and frightened of childbirth. On Maribeth’s fifth night, the girl’s labor begins. After her cries continue for two days, she is taken to a hospital and delivers by cesarean section. Maribeth is told that the baby is safe but that the girl will not return; she learns by chance that the child is a boy. Once both girls are gone, Maribeth is alone with the sisters and hopes others will arrive so she will have someone to talk to.

The six-month arrangement Bert makes is therefore not just a temporary relocation. In the convent, Maribeth encounters other young women whose babies are removed quickly and whose situations are treated as secrets. The institutional routine of meals, prayer, and restricted conversation contrasts with the life she has been separated from, while the departures of the other girls make her own isolation increasingly tangible.

The plan changes

Bert’s arrangement anticipates that Maribeth will give the baby to adoptive parents through the convent, but that is not ultimately the adoption she chooses. Later, when she works with Liz, their bond grows, and Liz understands that giving up the baby will bring Maribeth grief. The kindness of Maribeth’s coworkers makes the impending separation newly concrete: at a small shower, they give her baby clothes, knitted items, a blanket decorated with ducks, a teddy bear, toys, diapers, and a high chair. Seeing these objects makes the child real to Maribeth in a new way and leads her to ask Dr. MacLean about possible adoptive parents. His prospective matches are uncertain, and Maribeth does not want to take the baby home only to give it away afterward.

Instead, Maribeth asks Liz and John to adopt the baby. That request changes the destination and the relationships involved in the adoption first imposed as a condition of her return. After the baby is born, Maribeth has a conversation with Liz and John in which they make clear that she may change her mind; she persists in her decision. Three days after Kate’s birth, she signs the adoption papers with a shaking hand and waives the waiting period. She hugs Liz, and the nurse is asked not to bring Kate to her that day so that Maribeth can mourn.

The separation remains painful even as the adoption becomes a decision Maribeth affirms. When the family brings Kate home, Liz goes to her whenever she cries, while Maribeth tries not to respond. Maribeth understands that she must create distance: she will not raise Kate or be there for her as a mother, and she expects that, if their lives remain connected, she may be a friend instead. Liz is already occupying the maternal role. This later arrangement makes visible the difference between Bert’s original plan and Maribeth’s eventual choice: she still gives up the baby, but she chooses the adoptive parents herself and remains close to the family.

Return and significance

The separation imposed by Bert does not define the entirety of Maribeth’s future. After Kate’s birth and adoption, John tells her that she can return home, finish school, and pursue college; the Whittakers have set aside money for her education from the fund originally intended for Annie. Maribeth is allowed to stay with them or apply elsewhere. They agree that Kate will initially know Maribeth as their friend, not as her birth mother, leaving the possibility of telling her the truth when she is older. This planned concealment echoes Bert’s instruction to hide the pregnancy from Noelle, but the circumstances differ: the later agreement is made among Maribeth and Kate’s adoptive parents, with the child’s future knowledge left open.

The action begins with Bert converting a pregnancy into a matter of family shame and setting the conditions for Maribeth’s exile. Its consequences include her removal from home, her separation from her mother and sister, and her exposure to a convent system in which other girls’ births and adoptions are likewise kept private. Yet the original plan does not settle who will raise the baby. Maribeth’s later decision to ask Liz and John to adopt Kate gives her a more active role in the placement, while the papers, the deliberate distance after birth, and the agreed story about her identity preserve the costs and limits of that choice.