That Kind of Party, F. Scott Fitzgerald

I

After the party was over a top-lofty Stevens Duryea and two 1909 Maxwells waited with a single victoria at the curb—the boys watched as the Stevens filled with a jovial load of little girls and roared away. Then they strung down the street in threes and fours, some of them riotous, others silent and thoughtful. Even for the always surprised ages of ten and eleven when the processes of assimilation race hard to keep abreast of life, it had been a notable afternoon.

So thought Terrence R. Tipton, by occupation actor, athlete, scholar, philatelist and collector of cigar bands. He was so exalted that all his life he would remember vividly coming out of the house, the feel of the spring evening, the way that Dolly Bartlett walked to the auto and looked back at him, pert exultant and glowing. What he felt was like fright—appropriately enough for one of the major compulsions had just taken its place in his life. Fool for love was Terrence from now, and not just at a distance but as one who had been summoned and embraced, one who had tasted with a piercing delight and had become an addict within an hour. Two questions were in his mind as he approached his house—how long had this been going on, and when was he liable to encounter it again?

His mother greeted a rather pale, tow-headed little boy with the greenest of eyes and thin keen features. How was he? He was all right. Did he have a good time at the Gilrays’? It was all right. Would he tell her about it? There was nothing to tell.

“Wouldn’t you like to have a party, Terrence?” she suggested. “You’ve been to so many.”

“No, I wouldn’t, Mother.”

“Just think—ten boys and ten little girls, and ice-cream and cake and games.”

“What games?” he asked, not faintly considering a party but from reflex action to the word.

“Oh, euchre or hearts or authors.”

“They don’t have that.”

“What do they have?”

“Oh, they just fool around. But I don’t want to have a party.”

Yet suddenly the patent disadvantages of having girls in his own house and bringing into contact the worlds within and without, like indelicately tearing down the front wall—were challenged by his desire to be close to Dolly Bartlett again.

“Could we just be alone without anybody around?” he asked.

“Why, I wouldn’t bother you,” said Mrs. Tipton. “I’d simply get things started, then leave you.”

“That’s the way they all do.” But Terrence remembered that seveeral ladies had been there all afternoon, and it would be absolutely unthinkable if his mother were anywhere at hand.

At dinner the subject came up again.

“Tell Father what you did at the Gilrays’,” his mother said. “You must remember.”

“Of course I do, but—”

“I’m beginning to think you played kissing games,” Mr. Tipton guessed casually.

“Oh, they had a crazy game they called Clap-in-and-clap-out,” said Terrence indiscreetly.

“What’s that?”

“Well, all the boys go out and they say somebody has a letter. No, that’s post-office. Anyhow they have to come in and guess who sent for them.” Hating himself for the disloyalty to the great experience, he tried to end with: “—and then they kneel down and if he’s wrong they clap him out of the room. Can I have some more gravy please?”

“But what if he’s right?”

“Oh, he’s supposed to hug them,” Terrence mumbled. It sounded so shameful—it had been so lovely.

“All of them?”

“No, only one.”

“So that’s the kind of party you wanted,” said his mother, somewhat shocked. “Oh Terrence.”

“I did not,” he protested, “I didn’t say I wanted that.”

“But you didn’t want me to be there.”

“I’ve met Gilray downtown,” said Mr. Tipton. “A rather ordinary fellow from upstate.”

This sniffishness toward a diversion that had been popular in Washington’s day at Mount Vernon was the urban attitude toward the folkways of rural America. As Mr. Tipton intended, it had an effect on Terrence, but not the effect counted on. It caused Terrence, who suddenly needed a pliable collaborator, to decide upon a boy named Joe Schoonover, whose family were newcomers in the city. He bicycled over to Joe’s house immediately after dinner.

His proposition was that Joe ought to give a parry right away and, instead of having just a few kissing games, have them steadily all afternoon, scarcely pausing for a bite to eat. Terrence painted the orgy in brutal but glowing colors:

“Of course you can have Gladys. And then when you get tired of her you can ask for Kitty or anybody you want, and they’ll ask for you too. Oh, it’ll be wonderful!”

“Supposing somebody else asked for Dolly Bartlett.”

“Oh, don’t be a poor fool.”

“I’ll bet you’d just go jump in the lake and drown yourself.”

“I would not.”

“You would too.”

This was poignant talk but there was the practical matter of asking Mrs. Schoonover. Terrence waited outside in the dusk till Joe returned.

“Mother says all right.”

“Say, she won’t care what we do, will she?”

“Why should she?” asked Joe innocently, “I told her about it this afternoon and she just laughed.”

Terrence’s schooling was at Mrs. Cary’s Academy, where he idled through interminable dull grey hours. He guessed that there was little to learn there and his resentment frequently broke forth in insolence, but on the morning of Joe Schoonover’s party he was simply a quiet lunatic at his desk, asking only to be undisturbed.

“So the capitol of America is Washington,” said Miss Cole, “and the capitol of Canada is Ottawa—and the capitol of Central America—

“—is Mexico City,” someone guessed.

“Hasn’t any,” said Terrence absently.

“Oh, it must have a capitol,” said Miss Cole looking at her map.

“Well, it doesn’t happen to have one.”

“That’ll do, Terrence. Put down Mexico City for the capitol of Central America. Now that leaves South America.”

Terrence sighed.

“There’s no use teaching us wrong,” he suggested.

Ten minutes later, somewhat frightened, he reported to the principal’s office where all the forces of injustice were confusingly arrayed against him.

“What you think doesn’t matter,” said Mrs. Cary. “Miss Cole is your teacher and you were impertinent. Your parents would want to hear about it.”

He was glad his father was away, but if Mrs. Cary telephoned, his mother would quite possibly keep him home from the party. With this wretched fate hanging over him he left the school gate at noon and was assailed by the voice of Albert Moore, son of his mother’s best friend, and thus a likely enemy.

Albert enlarged upon the visit to the principal and the probable consequences at home. Terrence thereupon remarked that Albert, due to his spectacles, possessed four visual organs. Albert retorted as to Terrence’s pretention to universal wisdom. Brusque references to terrified felines and huge paranoiacs enlivened the conversation and presently there was violent weaving and waving during which Terrence quite accidentally butted into Albert’s nose. Blood flowed— Albert howled with anguish and terror, believing that his life blood was dripping down over his yellow tie. Terrence started away, stopped, pulled out his handkerchief and threw it toward Albert as a literal sop, then resumed his departure from the horrid scene, up back alleys and over fences, running from his crime. Half an hour later he appeared at Joe Schoonover’s back door and had the cook announce him.

“What’s the matter?” asked Joe.

“I didn’t go home. I had a fight with Albert Moore.”

“Gosh. Did he take off his glasses?”

“No, why?”

“It’s a penitentiary offense to hit anybody with glasses. Say, I’ve got to finish lunch.”

Terrence sat wretchedly on a box in the alley until Joe appeared, with news appropriate to a darkening world.

“I don’t know about the kissing games,” he said. “Mother said it was silly.”

With difficulty Terrence wrested his mind from the spectre of reform school.

“I wish she’d get sick,” he said absently.

“Don’t you say that about my mother.”

“I mean I wish her sister would get sick,” he corrected himself. “Then she couldn’t come to the party.”

“I wish that too,” reflected Joe. “Not very sick though.”

“Why don’t you call her up and tell her her sister is sick.”

“She lives in Tonawanda. She’d send a telegram—she did once.”

“Let’s go ask Fats Palmer about a telegram.”

Fats Palmer, son of the block’s janitor, was a messenger boy, several years older than themselves, a cigarette smoker and a blasphemer. He refused to deliver a forged telegram because he might lose his job but for a quarter he would furnish a blank and get one of his small sisters to deliver it. Cash down in advance.

“I think I can get it,” said Terrence thoughtfully.

They waited for him outside an apartment house a few squares away. He was gone ten minutes—when he came out he wore a fatigued expression and after showing a quarter in his palm sat on the curbstone for a moment, his mouth tightly shut, and waved them silent.

“Who gave it to you, Terrence?”

“My aunt,” he muttered faintly, and then: “It was an egg.”

“What egg?”

“Raw egg.”

“Did you sell some eggs?” demanded Fats Palmer. “Say, I know where you can get eggs——”

Terrence groaned.

“I had to eat it raw. She’s a health fiend.”

“Why, that’s the easiest money I ever heard of,” said Fats, “I’ve sucked eggs——”

“Don’t!” begged Terrence, but it was too late. That was an egg without therapeutic value—an egg sacrificed for love.

II

This is the telegram Terrence wrote:

Am sick but not so badly could you come at once please
Your loving sister

By four o’clock Terrence still knew academically that he had a family but they lived a long way off in a distant past. He knew also that he had sinned, and for a time he had walked an alley saying “Now I lay me’s” over and over for worldly mercy in the matter of Albert Moore’s spectacles. The rest