57．what I paid him was probably the difference between them being able to live
together and Stevie being sent to a group home.
the author meant that the
money she paid Stevie .
A．could help Stevie out of the
trouble
B．could send Stevie to a group home
C．couldn’t thoroughly solve
Stevie’s problem
D．could make a great difference to Stevie’s
I try not to be biased（偏见）but I had my doubts about hiring Stevie. His social
worker assured me that he would be a good, reliable busboy. But I had never had
a mentally handicapped employee. He was short, a little fat, with the smooth
facial fea tures and thick-togued speech of Down’s Syndrome（唐氏综合症）. I thought
most of my customers would be uncomfortable around Stevie, so I closely watched
him of the first few weeks.
I shouldn’t have worried. After the first week,
Stevie had my staff wrapped around his stubby little finger, and within a month
my regular trucker customers had adopted him as their official truck stop
mascot. After that, I really didn't care what the rest of the customers thought
of him. He was like a 21-year-old in blue jeans and Nikes, eager to laugh and
eager to please, but fierce in his attention to his duties. Every salt and
pepper shaker was exactly in its place, not a bread crumb or coffee spill was
visible when Stevie got done with the table. Our only problem was persuading him
to wait to clean a t able until after the customers were finished.
Over
time, we learned that he lived with his mother, a widow who was disabled. Money
was tight, and what I paid him was probably the difference between them being
able to live together and Stevie being sent to a group home.
That's why the
restaurant was a gloomy place that morning last August, the first morning in
three years that Stevie missed work. He was at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester
getting a heart surgery. His social worker said that people with Downs Syndrome
often had heart problems at an early age and there was a good chance he would
come through the surgery in good shape and be back at work in a few months.