Maribeth Robertson

Maribeth Robertson is a sixteen-year-old whose unwed pregnancy turns the choices available to her into questions of family authority, independence, education, and motherhood. Her father sends her away and cuts her off from home; she leaves the convent rather than spend the remaining months isolated, finds work and a life in Chicago, and grows close to Tommy Whittaker. When she gives birth to Kate, Maribeth chooses the Whittakers as adoptive parents, then leaves her daughter in their care while accepting their help to return to school and pursue college. The novel treats this decision not as an absence of love, but as a painful effort to provide a child with a future Maribeth believes she cannot yet offer herself.

Identity and Family Background

Maribeth is sixteen, the younger daughter of Bert Robertson, and the sister of Noelle Robertson. Her age is central to the limits placed on her: she is still a schoolgirl, dependent on her family, and unprepared for the adult consequences of a pregnancy. When she and Tommy discover that their birthdays fall only weeks apart, their shared age throws their unequal circumstances into relief. Tommy has a home and expects to return to school; Maribeth has been separated from her family and is expecting a baby whose father has not committed to her.

Before her pregnancy, Maribeth is cautious about defying her father. At the spring dance, he objects to her borrowed peacock-blue dress and makeup, imposing a stricter standard on her than the one he had accepted for her brother Ryan’s girlfriend. Maribeth promises to keep her jacket on, but her father forbids the dress regardless. The episode establishes how gendered rules govern her ordinary choices even before her pregnancy makes family authority more severe. Noelle, thirteen and more openly rebellious, reacts to their father’s restrictions with visible impatience; Maribeth is more hesitant to challenge him.

Pregnancy and Separation from Home

Maribeth’s pregnancy follows a single encounter with Paul Browne after a dance. She later explains to Tommy that she had been flattered by Paul’s attention and did not know how to assert herself as the situation developed. Paul told her he did not think she could become pregnant. Six weeks after their encounter, he announced his engagement to Debbie; on the same day, Maribeth realized she was pregnant. At the end of May, a doctor confirmed the pregnancy, and Maribeth understood that Paul’s reassurance had been wrong. She did not know what to do and initially did not want to tell him.

When Bert learns of the pregnancy, he tells Maribeth she cannot remain at home or keep the baby: she must go to the Sisters of Charity, give the baby up for adoption, and return afterward. He also forbids contact with her mother and Noelle until then, calling her actions a disgrace to the family. Maribeth objects that she made a mistake but did not intend to betray or hurt anyone, and asks how much punishment is enough. Her father rejects her appeal and frames the situation as a matter between her and God. His decision turns pregnancy into enforced separation: Maribeth is to leave the next morning, while her mother withdraws in tears and Noelle is to be told only that her sister is going away to school.

At the convent, Maribeth encounters two other pregnant girls, each also sent there to await childbirth and relinquishment. One girl gives birth soon after Maribeth arrives, and the baby is taken to adoptive parents without the mother seeing it. The other girl is fifteen; Maribeth learns that her pregnancy resulted from abuse by her uncle. After the girl gives birth by cesarean section and does not return, Maribeth is left alone among the sisters. The closed and regulated routine, and the other girls’ abrupt departures, make the expected process of concealed pregnancy and adoption seem to her like a punishment rather than a life she can endure.

Independence and Relationship with Tommy

Maribeth decides that waiting in the convent is too high a price. She wants work, friends, and the chance to live as a person rather than as someone confined until the baby is born. At dawn she leaves with her money and a small bag, buys an open-ended bus ticket to Chicago via Omaha, and watches her hometown recede without regret. Before leaving, she sends postcards to her mother and Noelle, promising to provide an address when she has one. The departure does not restore her family ties, but it gives her control over where she goes next.

In Chicago, Maribeth works at Jimmy D's and meets Tommy. She does not initially tell him about the pregnancy, and she conceals her circumstances from the restaurant staff by saying she is the widow of a man killed in Korea, fearing she might lose her job if they knew the truth. To Tommy, she is also careful about revealing the past: she explains that Paul was not a boyfriend she loved, but someone whose attention had flattered her, and that he returned to Debbie and married her after graduation. Maribeth is uncertain what Paul meant by suggesting that she could “get rid of” the pregnancy, and says she was told the procedure would be dangerous and expensive. Tommy is relieved she did not pursue it, though the conversation makes clear that neither teenager has much reliable knowledge of the options available to her.

As Maribeth describes her uncertainty about raising a child, she weighs both possible futures: surrendering a baby she has carried for months, or keeping a child for whom she may lack money, help, and readiness. She worries that something is wrong with her because she does not know whether she wants to be a mother, and is frightened that her feelings might change once she sees the baby. Tommy listens and offers support rather than an answer. Their closeness grows into love, but Maribeth is firm that she will not marry him simply to avoid giving up the child. She tells Liz that they are both too young and that marriage and parenthood would disrupt their futures; Tommy, she believes, does not yet understand the consequences as clearly as she does.

Their relationship also gives Tommy a way to move beyond his isolation after Annie Whittaker’s death. He visits Annie’s grave, cleans it, sweeps away leaves, and tends the flowers he planted there. He tells Annie about Maribeth, noticing that her directness and humor remind him of the sister she might have become as a teenager. Maribeth’s thought that some people pass through a life to bring a gift helps Tommy imagine Annie’s brief life in a new way, although it does not lessen his longing. Their friendship is therefore not only a romance: each offers the other companionship at a point when grief or exclusion has narrowed the world.

Education and the Decision to Place Kate

Tommy helps Maribeth continue her schooling while she works. After he returns to school in September, he copies the curriculum for her and lends her his books. They meet to do assignments together, and she keeps up with the work she would otherwise miss, including schoolwork Tommy finds that she handles even more strongly than he does. Their study routine gives practical form to the future Maribeth wants: she has spoken of returning to school, attending college, and waiting to build a family until she is ready.

Maribeth’s resolve to place the baby for adoption becomes more difficult as childbirth approaches. At a shower organized by Julie, her coworkers give her baby clothes, knitted items, a blanket patterned with ducks, toys, diapers, a teddy bear, and a high chair bought by Jimmy. The gifts make the baby’s future feel tangible, but they also make Maribeth confront that she will not see the child use them. She contacts Dr. MacLean about adoptive parents; the possibilities he describes remain uncertain, and time is short. The gifts do not simply prepare for a birth: they force the emotional cost of relinquishment into view.

Maribeth eventually makes a different request from the arrangement first imposed on her. In a conversation with Liz beside the Christmas tree decorated with Annie’s ornaments, she says that she wants Liz and John to adopt the baby. Liz is initially stunned, but Maribeth makes her request firmly. Choosing the Whittakers means that the child will be raised by people she knows and trusts, rather than being taken away immediately to strangers as she had seen happen at the convent. It also makes the adoption a personal decision between the birth mother and the prospective adoptive parents, while leaving the future account of Kate’s origins unresolved: Maribeth and the Whittakers agree that Kate will initially know Maribeth as their friend, not as her biological mother.

After Kate’s birth, Maribeth has time to reconsider, and Liz and John tell her they will understand if she changes her mind. She remains certain that adoption is right for the baby. Three days after the birth, she signs the legal papers with a shaking hand and waives the waiting period. She hugs Liz, and the family asks the nurse not to bring Kate in that day so Maribeth can have time to mourn. Her choice is deliberate, but deliberation does not spare her from loss.

Separation, Return, and Narrative Significance

When Maribeth leaves the hospital, the Whittakers bring Kate home. Liz responds to the baby when she cries, while Maribeth tries not to go to her, knowing that she must begin to separate herself from the daily work of motherhood. She recognizes that Kate will always have a place in her heart but that Liz will be the person mothering her: caring for her at night, tending her when she is ill, and reading to her. The distinction between biological and adoptive motherhood is made through concrete responsibilities as well as legal papers. Maribeth’s love persists, but she accepts that she will not occupy the parental place she has entrusted to Liz.

Before Maribeth returns to Iowa, John and Liz offer her the money they had set aside for Annie’s education. They arrange for her to go home, finish school in the spring, and attend college wherever she chooses; she may also return to stay with them. The Whittakers and Maribeth agree on what Kate will be told for now, and the possibility of revealing the truth later is left open. This support connects adoption to Maribeth’s independent future: she is not promised an easy reconciliation with Bert, but she is given educational resources and a place from which to continue her life.

Her farewell to Kate makes the contradiction at the heart of her decision unmistakable. Before leaving, Maribeth holds the sleeping baby, tells her how much she loves her, and acknowledges that she will not be Kate’s mother when she returns. She asks Kate to take care of Tommy and says she will always love her. As she turns away, Tommy is there, crying silently; he tells her that she does not have to give the baby away and that he still wants to marry her. His appeal cannot erase the decision she has made. Maribeth leaves as Kate’s birth mother and as a young woman returning to education and family life, carrying grief without treating it as proof that her choice was wrong. Her arc places agency inside severe constraints: the options are shaped by stigma, family authority, age, and limited resources, but her departure, her request to the Whittakers, and her plans for school are acts of self-determination.