Jimmy D's

Jimmy D's is the restaurant where Maribeth Robertson turns a stop on a bus journey into a new start. It gives her paid work and a place in a small community, and its counter brings her into contact with Tommy Whittaker. As she waits tables, studies, and prepares for the birth, the restaurant becomes both a practical support and the setting where the costs of her intended adoption come sharply into view.

Setting and first opportunity

Maribeth is three and a half months pregnant when she leaves the bus at a small, cheerful college town. She had expected to continue toward Chicago, but after dinner she notices a window sign offering work to waitresses and busboys. Rather than return to the bus, she goes back to ask about the job, uncertain whether the people there will believe the explanation she might give for arriving alone. The restaurant’s ordinary hiring notice creates a decisive opening: she can stay somewhere, earn money, and begin making choices for herself.

Julie, the waitress who first served her, responds by welcoming her rather than turning her away. She tells Maribeth to retrieve her bag, offers her a room for the night in her home, and puts her to work bussing tables. The shift is physically tiring, but the welcome is immediate and practical. The restaurant is not presented as an easy refuge: its work involves heavy trays and pitchers, and its employees have their own financial and family burdens. Yet it gives Maribeth a place to begin.

Work and community

The restaurant operates under the discipline of an owner who has had a heart attack and now comes in only mornings and some afternoons; his son does most of the cooking. The staff includes four women and several young boys who bus tables, most of them high-school students. Julie explains how thin the margins of her own life are: her ex-husband is years behind on child support, and her wages must cover her children’s everyday needs. She also describes how coworkers help with childcare and other tasks. Their support makes visible the informal network on which working people depend when family help is absent.

Maribeth earns the staff’s regard through effort. She works hard, treats customers pleasantly, and enjoys the job; customers respond warmly, while Jimmy values waitresses who make diners feel welcome. She is exhausted after work, but the job and a room of her own let her continue her life on her own terms. She plans to borrow books from the library and keep studying, treating this period as a detour rather than the end of her education.

A meeting at the counter

The restaurant is also where Maribeth meets Tommy. Julie points out the quiet young man who often comes in for dinner, usually ordering meat loaf. He is polite but withdrawn, and Julie suspects that he does not want to go home. She encourages the new waitress to serve him. When Maribeth asks his name, he introduces himself as Tom; she gives hers as Maribeth. A brief exchange at the counter becomes the beginning of a close friendship.

Tommy soon speaks more freely with Maribeth than he has with the restaurant’s other workers. When he asks her to spend a Friday afternoon with him, she accepts and gives him her address, trusting him. The staff notice the change: the previously taciturn regular now talks readily with her. The restaurant thus functions not just as a workplace but as the shared public setting in which the two establish trust and begin spending time together.

That bond acquires practical importance. Tommy visits the restaurant regularly, drives Maribeth home after work, and helps her continue her studies. They work through school assignments together, and he arranges to share his books and copy his curriculum so she can keep up with the semester. Maribeth also sometimes studies at the restaurant, bringing him food while he does homework in a back corner. Her job and her education coexist there, sustained in part by the friendship that began across its counter.

Pregnancy and the meaning of the gifts

By early October, Maribeth’s coworkers have realized she is pregnant. They celebrate what they believe is a child that will preserve the memory of her dead husband, unaware that the baby’s father is Paul Browne and that Maribeth intends to place the child for adoption. She cannot explain her decision to them. Their small gifts therefore carry a meaning they do not know: she puts them aside in a drawer, feeling guilty about the affection they express and the future she does not plan to share with the baby.

As her pregnancy advances, she keeps working because she needs both her wages and the money her father provided for medical care and delivery. She expects to work until near the end; supporting herself after the birth will be difficult, and she has not bought supplies because she does not plan to keep the child. Her coworkers do not know this when they discuss holding a baby shower. The contrast between their hopes and her private intention remains unspoken until her last day at the restaurant.

After Thanksgiving, Maribeth gives notice. She plans to leave on the fifteenth and stay with the Whittakers until the baby is born, giving her time to prepare for exams and avoiding being alone near the delivery. On her final day, Julie organizes a shower. The staff bring knitted clothes, booties, a blanket decorated with ducks, a teddy bear, toys, diapers, and a high chair Jimmy has bought. These particular objects make the baby newly tangible to Maribeth: the child has clothes and things to use, but, as she sees it, no parents prepared to raise it. The gifts bring home the emotional weight of adoption and prompt her to ask Dr. MacLean about possible adoptive parents.

Significance

Jimmy D's marks a change in Maribeth’s circumstances without removing their difficulty. The restaurant offers employment, companionship, and a measure of independence, but its help is personal rather than a guarantee of security. Julie’s welcome and the coworkers’ practical solidarity give Maribeth room to work and study; their mistaken assumptions about her pregnancy also show how much of her situation she has to keep private.

The restaurant’s recurring role is especially clear in the movement from the job sign that first invites Maribeth to stay to the farewell gifts that make leaving emotionally complicated. At first, Jimmy D's is an unexpected chance to stop travelling and support herself. By her departure, it has become a community whose kindness strengthens her resolve even as it exposes the gravity of what she is about to do. The gifts do not change her plan, but they make its human meaning harder to hold at a distance.