The Baby Party

"...the very vitality of the child irritated him...and one Sunday afternoon when she had disrupted a bridge game by permanently hiding up the ace of spades, he had made a scene that had reduced his wife to tears.
-F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Baby Party (1925)
The Baby Party (1925) was first published in Hearst's International Cosmopolitan at the height of the author's magazine fiction writing. Fitzgerald's family life is mirrored in the plot with the couple's romantic yet stormy relationship and birth of a daughter which only increases their marital discord. Delighted with the idea of having a child, the father, John, realizes the realities of parenthood make it far less appealing than he had envisioned. This story is for those who relish in a wry look at the misbehavior of children and adults alike written by a master storyteller.