No Stupid Questions

It is a quiet afternoon at Whit's End when ten-year-old Meg Stevens comes rolling through the door on her skates with a favor to ask. First, though, she has a question: what does "much obliged" mean? John Avery Whittaker tells her it is an old-fashioned way of saying thank you, and then he waits to hear what she really came for.

Meg needs somewhere to go after school. Her mother, Carol, works late at the beauty parlor, and Meg used to wait there, but Rita, her mother's boss, has decided that Meg asks too many stupid questions and is bad for business. Meg offers an example. When Mrs. Johnson came in for a permanent, Meg asked why it is called that, since Mrs. Johnson comes back every single week. Whit guesses, correctly, that nobody answered her. Meg wears a house key around her neck along with her skate key, but she hates going home to an empty house. Whit tells her she is welcome to stay at Whit's End as long and as often as she likes, and then he shares a secret with her: there is no such thing as a stupid question.

To prove it, Whit tries to get a second opinion from the only other customer in the shop, a sharp-tongued man in a wheelchair named Chris. Chris does not enjoy being drawn into conversation, and he says the only kind of question is an embarrassing one. Meg is undaunted. She asks whether he writes books, because he talks like one, and she tells him about the books she loves - all the Black Stallion stories, and best of all the S volume of the Universal Encyclopedia that her mother bought at a yard sale for twenty-five cents, full of Sioux Indians and Siberian tigers and seaweed. Chris takes his coffee and heads for the door. Meg hurries to hold it open for him, insisting on helping when he has said he needs none, and in the tangle his wheelchair tips over. Chris refuses all help, rights himself, and leaves angry.

Meg feels terrible, but Whit explains something about his friend. He has known Chris for twelve years, and Chris has been angry for nearly all of them. He is so afraid that people will pity him that he keeps them at a distance, and he misses out on some of the best things life has to offer because of it. None of that is Meg's fault, Whit tells her. The only thing that got hurt tonight was Chris's pride. Meg decides on her own to leave the roller skates outside from now on, and Whit rewards the idea with apple pie a la mode, which of course prompts another question.

The next day Whit gives Meg an assignment. She arrives with a list of ten questions about things she wants to know, and Whit sends her off to the library with the list and a gift for a friend of his who works in the reference department, a man whose job is helping people find answers. The gift is apple pie and black coffee. As Meg heads out the door, Whit admits he feels a bit like he has just sent Daniel into the lions' den.

At the library, Meg finds her way past the stacks to the reference desk and discovers that Mr. Gottlieb is Chris - Chris Christopher Gottlieb, the very man whose wheelchair she knocked over. She apologizes at once. He is prickly at first, correcting her spelling and assuming her mother has parked her at the library while getting her hair done. Meg sets him straight: her mother works at the beauty parlor, she works hard, she cares, and she knows exactly where Meg is. And, Meg adds, he is being mean. Chris pauses, and then admits he stands corrected. Since he is sitting, he corrects that too.

From there the afternoon changes. Meg shows him her secret treasure, a mariner's compass that belonged to the father who left when she was a baby; she found it under the refrigerator at their old home. Chris shows her that the needle is not broken at all, that it points to magnetic north, and that every other direction is found in relation to it. When Meg does not follow, he simply says they will come back to it. They work down her list. A fjord, he explains, is a natural harbor with steep cliffs, which sends Meg into a mix-up about a Norwegian car that leaves Chris laughing harder than he has in a long time. He is careful to tell her he is not laughing at her. She is delightful, that is all.

Meg finally asks whether her questions are stupid, because people always say they are. Chris tells her the opposite is true: he has never met a more genuinely interested library patron in his life. When Meg wonders whether patron means something like a saint, he hauls down the heavy dictionary and reads it out. The word comes from the Latin pater, meaning father, and its first meaning is one who serves in some way as a father, a guardian, a protector. Meg likes that word very much. Then she asks the question nobody else dares to ask, about his legs, and Chris answers plainly that there was a car accident long ago and that he gets along fine. Meg tells him he is strong, because he held the doors open and got himself back into his chair all by himself. Chris, who is thirty-eight, tells the ten-year-old that he owes her an apology for how rudely he behaved.

Whit telephones to say it has gotten dark outside, and Chris, who has no windows in his corner of the library, offers to bring Meg over himself. He promises to negotiate for her to come back tomorrow. Whit reflects afterward on how he used to look at a hard situation and assume nothing could improve it, standing around full of sympathy and short on initiative, either lacking the imagination to see how he could help or afraid of meddling. Meg and Chris remind him how powerful a simple introduction can be. And Meg proves his point on the spot, walking up to her mother with her new friend beside her and announcing that this is Mr. Gottlieb, and that she has told him Carol will cut his hair.