Alice Guthrie's Narrative Fiction

Other than a telephone, a large wireless radio, and a record phonograph there were few luxuries in the home. Nell’s family had parted with valuables in recent years to pay for her mother’s doctors bills Now, it was sparsely decorated with handmade quilts, croqueted dollies, and simple figurines. Alice Guthrie connected to the world. Holding a long string of costume-jewelry pearls, Nell crossed the room to her mother, who was in her wheelchair listening to the wireless. “Hey, Mama, how are you getting on?” “Oh, Nell how lovely you look. And your face seems to carry the wind and the sun from your sail with Emma.” Nell smiled at her. Alice Guthrie began life as an active girl and woman with a strong love for music. After her second child was born, she after she was diagnosed with chronic infectious arthritis. She continued to teach piano to

Worth Davis’ childhood home. As Nell climbed the steps leading to the lower veranda, she remembered the night she and Asa began to court. At a Christmas party, Asa dropped down next to Nell on the piano bench as she played Maple Leaf Rag. When a game of “Guess my Secret” started in the parlor, Asa ferreted Nell into the back yard where their breath clouded in the chilled winter air. As the muted laughter from the party drifted into the garden, she shivered when he kissed her for the first time. Leaving Beaufort a hundred miles behind, Nell stepped into the Davis drawing room. She likened it to the halls of English castles where ancestral portraits strengthened the family’s sense of linage and purpose. As her eyes traveled over the walls of the room, she took in the rich velour curtains that framed the windows, and the oil paintings of confederate generals and civil war scenes interspersed among bric-a-brac shelving holding exquisite eggshell china. It felt elegant and removed from Nell: it was a magical world and she longed to be a part