Allan A. De Fina

I must confess now to the only crime I’ve ever committed. I don’t exactly know what drove me to it. Perhaps it was because I lived such a dull life at the age of nine. Same old routine: Get up in the morning, fight with my brothers and my sister for a turn in the bathroom (and my older sister took forever, let me tell you! What do girls do in the bathroom for such a long time anyway?!), go to school, eat a bologna sandwich for lunch, come home after school, fight with my brothers and sister, get sent to my room to do my homework, fight with my brothers and my sister some more, get sent to bed early–well, you get the picture.
I spent days dreaming of a different life. Life with the family I was supposed to be born into. Life where I was an only child, with a room all to myself. With normal parents–like they had on television–who wore pajamas to bed. Not like my father who wore boxer shorts and a tee-shirt and my mother in her curlers and nightgown. I spent a lot of time worrying that there’d be a fire in the middle of the night and we’d have to run out into the street and all of the kids in the apartment building where we lived would get to see my father in his blue-striped boxers. Bathrobes! Normal people–like the family I was supposed to have–would have pajamas and bathrobes! And, they’d probably have a dog anyway, who would warn them at the first sign of smoke! We couldn’t have a dog. Nope. I just had my brothers and my sister.
And school. Mrs. Feinstein (We’d call her Mrs. Fumesteam because she was always blowing her top about something) was the kind of teacher who’d be yelling during a fire drill that we’d better keep quiet or we’d be writing for homework about the importance of keeping quiet during a fire drill so we could follow the instructions of the firemen. Of course, if there ever were instructions to be followed, we’d never have heard them. Not with all that racket going on.
Mrs. Fumesteam was always chewing me out for something. I’ll never forget the day she made me go around and show everyone how my fingernails were “in mourning.” You know, it would have been nice to have clean nails like everybody else, but scrubbing them was a waste of my time. (Anyway, I couldn’t ever get into the bathroom in my house so it wasn’t likely they were going to be clean when “Old Yeller” checked them!) I had better things to do with my time than go to school and submit to fingernail inspections.
Since I wasn’t athletic–being the shortest kid in class, even shorter than the girls–and since I was already wearing glasses, I was constantly called a “bookworm.” And, while it bothered me at first, it stopped bothering me after a while. In fact, I came to accept the fact that reading books was something I was good at. So good that I read almost all the books in the library at school–even a lot of the books that only girls were supposed to read. You can just imagine what that did for my reputation. But, when you’re a short kid with myopia and dirty fingernails who’s always getting yelled at by the teacher for not paying attention to her screaming all the time, you kind of get used to having a reputation.
So, now that you know all this stuff about me, you might understand why it was I did what I did. (The crime of passion. The title of this story. Stay with me here.) There was this book I found at the public library. It was the greatest. It was about this deep sea diver, the kind who wore a helmet with a little tube in it and one of those big astronaut-like suits and there was some kind of air hose that went up to the surface. You know the kind I mean? Well, I thought this was like the greatest occupation anyone could have. Heck, I thought this was the greatest life anyone could have. If you wanted to get away from your weird parents, brothers and sister, and screaming teachers, all you’d have to do was put on this suit and descend blissfully into the peace and quiet. Now that was living!
But it got better. At the bottom of the ocean there was all of this marine life that nobody up top had ever seen. And not even good swimmers would see the different kinds of creatures that are on the bottom of the ocean because it wasn’t possible to hold your breath that long. And there were shipwrecks to be explored. And treasures from those shipwrecks. It was entirely probable that you could just scoop up gold coins from the ocean floor. Think about it. You could afford to send your parents and brothers and sister on a long vacation somewhere far away with all that loot. This was the job for me.
Well, I pored over that book, reading and rereading it, studying the pictures, trying to imagine what pictures the illustrator didn’t paint. I loved that book! I checked it out of the public library over and over and read it all the time, including every time I got sent to my room for fighting with my brothers and my sister–which, as you already know, was a lot.
So, imagine my surprise when I tried to check it out of the library for a fourth time and that wrinkly old librarian wouldn’t let me take it out. “You’ll have to let someone else read it now,” she said. Well, she obviously didn’t know the kids from my neighborhood. They weren’t exactly readers. And how many kids who live in apartment buildings really want to read about deep sea divers anyway? I tried to explain this to her, but she wouldn’t listen. She grabbed the book out of my sweaty fingers and placed it on the cart near the desk.
I wasn’t that easy to get rid of, however. I skulked about behind the shelves nearby and waited for the right moment, like when she was busy taking her handkerchief from tucked in her sleeve and honking her nose into it and tucking it back into her sleeve. I knew my moment would eventually come, what with all those dusty books and all.
And it did. While she was otherwise occupied with that nose of hers, I crept up behind her and snatched the book from the cart. I quickly slipped it into my bookbag, put on an innocent face, and even had the nerve to wave “good-bye” to her as I strutted out the door.
She must have figured out what happened because about two weeks later I got the first of many postcards from the library, telling me that the book was overdue and that the fine was accumulating at the costly penalty of two cents a day! My mother kept nagging me about the book and asking me if I took it back. Of course, I lied to her and blamed that senile old librarian. And, my mother, with those curlers wrapped a little too tightly and tugging at her brain stem, believed me! I guess bookworms don’t look like they’d be very good thieves.
The book was mine! I must have read that copy of Deep Sea Adventure thousands of times. I don’t quite remember what happened to that book, though I wouldn’t be surprised if I’d thumbed through it so many times that the pages just started to wear away and the book finally fell apart or even tattered into oblivion, little by little.
But the story doesn’t quite end here. I grew up. I moved away. I wanted something other than that dull life I lived. I got taller–finally (average height for an American male). I even forgot about the book and the crime I’d committed.
Eventually I moved back to the town in which I grew up. I had taken a teaching job in that town and found an apartment not far from the building in which I’d spent so much time fighting with my brothers and sister for a few minutes in the bathroom.
About the time I moved back to town, they’d just finished remodeling the public library and there was a big story about its grand reopening in the local newspaper. (So, you think you know where this story is going, do you?) Anyway, I figured I’d be the model teacher and go and get a library card and take it in and show my fourth graders and inspire them to go out and get their own cards. (Imagine how ironic life is: I was teaching the same grade that Mrs. Fumesteam taught!)
So, off I went to the library to get my card–with all the rights and privileges of the borrower awarded to me. I strode up to the desk, sophisticated man of the world and exemplary teacher, and told the withered librarian at the counter that I wanted to apply for a library card. I launched into a big speech about the responsibilities of being a role model to my students and how perhaps I’d even arrange a field trip to the newly remodeled library. The librarian was enchanted.
“So, are you new in town?” she wanted to know.
“No. I grew up here. But, you know, I spent years off finding myself. And now, I’ve moved back here–yep, back to the town I grew up in–er, in which I grew up.”
“Oh, that’s so nice,” she said. “Say,” she drawled, “do you by any chance remember your address from when you were a child?”
“Sure,” I answered.
“Well, I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to look you up in our files and I’m going to find your old library card number and put it on your new card. You’ll be a charter member of the new library!”
“Cool,” I said, feeling quite satisfied with myself.
The little librarian went and got a dusty old wooden box. She blew (“Poof!”) a thin layer of grainy particles from its lid, sneezed, grabbed a handkerchief from her sleeve, dabbed her nose, tucked the tissue back in her sleeve, and started rifling through the index cards inside the box.
“Let’s see. De Fina, De Fina, De Fina....” Finally, she stopped, yanked a card out, held it away from her face, adjusted her glasses-on-a-rope at the edge of her nose, and said, “Oh, dear.”
I looked, puzzled.
“You have a book out.”
In that moment, it came back to me. I remembered my crime. I knew exactly what book it was. I could see the cover illustration in my head. I even felt some sweet nostalgia, until another thought jarred its way into my brain: Two cents a day, 365 days a year, twenty-seven years.... I was convinced I was going to jail.
Well, I didn’t. Though, I did pay my debt to society. Fortunately, I only had to pay the $6.95 cover price of the book. A small price for a crime of passion, don’t you think? And, just in case you don’t believe this, it’s true–most of it anyway. I may exaggerate a little here and there, but what else do you expect from someone who’s passionate about words?



©1997. This story may be reproduced for personal classroom use only. It may not be otherwise reproduced, stored electronically, or quoted in whole or in part, without the written consent of the author, who is the copyright holder for this work.