According to An F. Scott Fitzgerald Encyclopedia, Fitzgerald wrote "A Baby Party" in one night and sold it to Hearst's International for $1500. The tale of a nasty altercation between upper-middle-class neighbours that grows out of an incident between their two-year-old children, this story is not particularly profound but it is funny, in a disturbing way. And the descriptions of the children are suprisingly perceptive. Or maybe I shouldn't be surprised at all -- there's something childlike (or perhaps childish is a better word) about all of Fitzgerald's characters. He was very good at demonstrating the many ways in which people never really grow up, and this story is very much that kind of story.
Here is the incident between the two-year-olds Ede and Billy that sets off first their mothers, who exchange insults, and then their fathers, who begin to fistfight and end by rolling around in the mud and snow in the front yard.
"You're a darling," she whispered to her child, drawing her suddenly against her knee. "Do you know you're a darling? Do you know you're a darling?"
Ede laughed. "Bow-wow," she said suddenly.
"Bow-wow?" Edith looked around. "There isn't any bow-wow."
"Bow-wow," repeated Ede. "I want a bow-wow."
Edith followed the small pointing finger.
"That isn't a bow-wow, dearest, that's a teddy bear."
"Bear?"
"Yes, that's a teddy-bear and it belongs to Billy Markey. You don't want Billy Markey's teddy-bear, do you?"
Ede did want it.
She broke away from her mother and approached Billy Markey, who held the toy closely in his arms. Ede stood regarding him with inscrutable eyes, and Billy laughed.
Grown-up Edith looked at her watch again, this time impatiently.
The party had dwindled until, besides Ede and Billy, there were only two babies remaining -- and one of the two remained only by virtue of having hidden himself under the dining room table. It was selfish of John [Edith's husband] not to come. It showed so little pride in the child. Other fathers had come, half a dozen of them, to call for their wives, and they had stayed for a while and looked on.
There was a sudden wail. Ede had obtained Billy's teddy-bear by pulling it forcibly from his arms, and on Billy's attempt to recover it, she had pushed him casually to the floor.
"Why, Ede!" cried her mother, suppressing an inclination to laugh.
Joe Markey, a handsome, broad-shouldered man of thirty-five, picked up his son and set him on his feet. "You're a fine fellow," he said jovially. "Let a girl knock you over! You're a fine fellow."
"Did he bump his head?" Mrs. Markey returned anxiously from bowing the next to last mother out the door.
"No-o-o-o," exclaimed Markey. "He bumped something else, didn't you, Billy? He bumped something else."
Billy had so far forgotten the bump that he was already making an attempt to recover his property. He seized a leg of the bear which projected from Ede's enveloping arms and tugged at it but without success.
"No," said Ede emphatically.
Suddenly, encouraged by the success of her former half-accidental manoeuvre, Ede dropped the teddy-bear, placed her hands on Billy's shoulders and pushed him backward off his feet.
This time he landed less harmlessly; his head hit the bare floor just off the rug with a dull hollow sound, whereupon he drew in his breath and delivered an agonized yell.
Immediately the room was in confusion. With an exclamation, Markey hurried to his son, but his wife was first to reach the injured baby and catch him up in her arms.
"Oh Billy," she cried, "what a terrible bump! She ought to be spanked."
"Edith, who had rushed immediately to her daughter, heard this remark, and her lips came sharply together.
"Why, Ede," she whispered perfunctorily, "you bad girl!"
Ede put back her little head suddenly and laughed. It was a loud laugh, a triumphant laugh with victory in it and challenge and contempt. Unfortunately it was also an infectious laugh. Before her mother realized the delicacy of the situation, she too had laughed, an audible, distinct laugh not unlike the baby's, and partaking of the same overtones.
Then, as suddenly, she stopped.
Mrs. Markey's face had grown red with anger, and Markey, who had been feeling the back of the baby's head with one finger, looked at her, frowning.
"It's swollen already," he said with a note of reproof in his voice. "I'll get some witch-hazel."
But Mrs. Markey had lost her temper. "I don't see anything funny about a child being hurt!" she said in a trembling voice.
Little Ede meanwhile had been looking at her mother curiously. She noted that her own laugh had produced her mother's and she wondered if the same cause would always produce the same effect. So she chose this monent to throw back her head and laugh again.
To her mother the additional mirth added the final touch of hysteria to the situation. Pressing her handkerchief to her mouth she giggled irrepressibly. It was more than nervousness -- she felt that in a peculiar way she was laughing with her child -- they were laughing together.
It was in a way a defiance -- those two against the world.
While Markey rushed up-stairs to the bathroom for ointment, his wife was walking up and down rocking the yelling boy in her arms.
"Please go home!" she broke out suddenly. "The child's badly hurt, and if you haven't the decency to be quiet, you'd better go home."
"Very well," said Edith, her own temper rising. "I've never seen any one make such a mountain out of -- "
"Get out!" cried Mrs. Markey frantically. "There's the door, get out -- I never want to see you in our house again. You or your brat either!"
And it only gets worse from there. Those of you planning birthday parties, take note.
