No Stupid Questions

Ten-year-old Meg Stevens rolls into Whit's End on her roller skates with a favor to ask. Her mother works at the beauty parlor, but the boss, Rita, has decided Meg is bad for business because she asks too many "stupid questions" - like why Mrs. Johnson's permanent is called a permanent if she has to come back every week. Meg wears a house key around her neck, but she hates going home to an empty house, so she asks Mr. Whittaker if she can stay at Whit's End in the afternoons until her mother gets off work. Whit warmly agrees and shares a secret with her: "There's no such thing as a stupid question."

That very evening, Meg meets Chris Gottlieb, a quiet man in a wheelchair who dryly amends Whit's saying - there are no stupid questions, "only an embarrassing one." Curious as ever, Meg asks if he writes books, since he talks like one, and chatters about her favorite book, the S volume of an encyclopedia her mother bought for a quarter. When Chris leaves, Meg skates over to hold the door for him, and in the collision she knocks his wheelchair right over. Chris angrily refuses all help, hauls himself back into his chair by his own strength, and storms out. Whit comforts the shaken girl: Chris has been his friend for twelve years and has been angry nearly all of them, because he is so afraid of being pitied that he avoids people altogether. Nothing was hurt but his pride. Meg decides on her own to stop wearing skates indoors, and the two share apple pie à la mode - once Meg finds out what "à la mode" means. Later, Meg's mother, Carol, comes to pick her up, grateful for Whit's kindness. She is raising Meg alone; Meg's father left when Meg was a baby. Meg, meanwhile, has cheerfully informed Whit that his hair looks like he cut it himself with pinking shears, and that her mama will fix it.

The next day, Whit sends Meg to the library with a list of ten questions and a gift of pie and black coffee for his friend in the reference department, a Mr. Gottlieb. As she goes, Whit murmurs, "I feel like I just sent Daniel into the lion's den." Sure enough, Mr. Gottlieb turns out to be Chris himself. Flustered, Meg apologizes for the wheelchair accident and announces the gift is "a piece of apple coffee and a cup of pie." Chris takes her list of questions and, almost in spite of himself, gets to work. He teaches her how her compass works - a treasured secret she found under the refrigerator, left behind by the father she barely remembers. When Chris sneers that the library isn't a babysitter for kids whose mothers are off getting their hair done, Meg hotly sets him straight: her mother works at the beauty parlor, works hard, and cares about her. Chris admits he stands - "pardon me again, I sit" - corrected. Then Meg's question about fjords, which she thought were Norwegian cars, makes the sour librarian burst out laughing, startling his fellow librarian Miss Adams. He assures Meg her questions aren't stupid at all; she is the most genuinely interested library patron he has ever met. Looking up "patron" together, they find it comes from the Latin word for father, meaning a guardian or protector - a word Meg says she likes. Emboldened, she asks what happened to his legs, and he tells her about his long-ago car accident, then apologizes for his rudeness the night before. When Whit phones to say it's dark out, Chris promises to bring Meg right over and offers to negotiate a return visit tomorrow.

Whit reflects on how he once assumed bad situations couldn't get better, and on how powerful a simple introduction can be. The story closes with one: Meg presenting Mr. Gottlieb to her mother - "And I told him you'd cut his hair."