The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto

by Mitch Albom

  “That’s right. I’m playing there Saturday night. I will leave you four free tickets in the front row if you take care of this man right now.”

  Even as he said it Frankie felt as if he were listening to someone else. Where did he find these words?

  The doctor sniffed as he read the business card. It belonged to a high-­ranking events manager.

  “You really playin’ the Opry?”

  “Look at my clothes,” Frankie said.

  The doctor pursed his lips. He nodded at the nurse.

  “In the back,” he said.

  A few hours later, Frankie sat near a bed, softly strumming his guitar, a blues progression that seemed to make its own rhythm.

  “Keep playin’ boy. It soothes me.”

  Hampton Belgrave, at seventy-­seven, had suffered a heart attack, but the quick medical attention he’d received had stabilized him. He would live.

  “You really promise that doctor tickets?” Hampton whispered.

  Frankie nodded.

  “To a show you ain’t doing?”

  “Yeah.”

  Hampton smiled and shook his head.

  “You a lot smarter than when I found you in my trunk.”

  Frankie fingered a chord. Hampton choked up.

  “Ain’t no tellin’ what mighta happened to me.”

  “You’ll be all right, Hampton.”

  “Thanks to you.”

  “Nah.”

  “I’m going to sleep a bit now. Maybe say a prayer.”

  The old mechanic closed his eyes, so he did not see what happened next: the D string on Frankie’s guitar turned a burning shade of blue. Frankie stared at it. He felt a chill run down his arms and legs. You have wondered about the critical passages in my child’s story? Here is one:

  In the quiet of a hospital room, to the sound of an old man’s breathing, Frankie Presto finally understood that, somehow, through those strings, he held life in his hands.

  Two weeks later and eight pounds lighter, Hampton returned home. He sat Frankie down and told him that managing a musician was obviously too strenuous for him, and “maybe you oughta consider someone with a better head for these things.”

  Frankie was sad. He liked Hampton, and he wanted to see the inside of the Grand Ole Opry. But the truth was, he didn’t care for the cowboy clothes. And he never found Aurora York in Nashville, which was the reason he had come. The closest he came was the makeup counter at Harvey’s department store, where a middle-­aged woman remembered a blond girl with a British accent who said she was moving to New Orleans.

  It wasn’t much to go on.

  But it was something.

  So one morning, a few months after the Opry incident, Frankie took twenty dollars from the money left in Hank Williams’s envelope, and hid the rest in Hampton’s drawer, as a way of thanking Hampton for looking after him. Then he put on his sunglasses, gave the old man a hug, and walked off—­with his guitar, his suitcase, and the hairless dog—­to the Greyhound bus station, where he purchased a one-­way ticket to New Orleans.

  As he went to board, the bus driver said, “No dogs allowed unless you’re blind.” Thinking fast, Frankie put his hands out in front of him and said, “Why do you think I’m wearing these glasses?” He and the creature were allowed to get on. The bus pulled away. An older woman sitting across from him tapped him on the arm and stuffed a ten-­dollar bill into his hands. “May God help you with your affliction,” she said.

  Frankie thanked the woman. He heard the dog whimper. He wondered why God was always mentioned in the most unusual moments of his life.

  32

  1954

  * * *

  ABOUT THAT DOG.

  Frankie was now eighteen years old, which meant his four-­legged companion was even older. In the life of a canine, that is rare. But this was an uncommon animal, and its life span was clearly determined by need, not years. The dog was there to pull Frankie from the river. It was there to distract soldiers at the sardine factory. It was there to keep Frankie company when Baffa was arrested. And somehow it was there, in Detroit, outside the orphanage, when Frankie desperately needed a friend.

  Down in New Orleans, the dog waited nights in hotel rooms while Frankie earned money playing with doo-­wop groups and jazz quartets. During the day, the creature followed Frankie up and down the streets, waiting outside storefronts while Frankie asked about Aurora. Each time my child emerged dejected, with no new information, the dog rose, its tongue panting, and accompanied him to the next stop.

  But as 1954 drew to a close, Frankie noticed his companion slowing down. It took longer to walk those streets or to navigate the high grass below the Huey P. Long Bridge, which straddled the Mississippi River. Frankie practiced beneath that bridge three hours each day, as the trains passed overhead. He’d become quite skilled at rhythm and blues, and he strummed to the beat of the wheels when they hit a gap in the rail joints. The hairless dog would look up at the noise.

  “Chuckutty, chuckutty,” Frankie would sing.

  But in recent weeks, nothing Frankie played could raise the creature’s head off its paws, not even when he imitated the high warble of a young Elvis Presley and the scrubbing rhythm of his new record called “That’s All Right (Mama).”

  “You are a tough audience,” Frankie said.

  The dog sneezed.

  “What do you want to hear?”

  The dog blinked and looked directly at him.

  “Mmm? Something slow and pretty?”

  Frankie leaned against a tree and began picking at a 2/5 progression. The air was warm and the sun ducked behind a single white cloud. Frankie’s memory drifted. Before he knew it, he was fingering “Maalaala Mo Kaya,” the song he’d once played to honor the buried dead in a Spanish field. Frankie hadn’t tried this piece in many years, and he was surprised by how easily it came back to him. Its simple melody was soothing. The hairless dog gave a big, silent yawn.

  When Frankie finished, the animal came to him and Frankie scratched its ears. The dog licked his fingers.

  “Thanks,” Frankie said, smiling. “Now I’m all sticky.”

  The dog turned and walked to the river’s edge. The muddy current was moving quickly.

  “Hey, careful,” Frankie yelled, leaning forward, but for the first time ever, the animal turned and growled, causing Frankie to lean back, confused.

  There are songs that you play that you have to restart, and songs that you play that you never get right. But when a song is complete, there is no more you can do.

  The hairless dog leaped into the water and paddled away.

  Frankie watched limply, knowing somehow he was not supposed to follow, even as the last member of his original three-­piece band disappeared down the Mississippi River.

  A moment later he heard a rustling in the tall grass behind him. He turned his head and squinted into the sun. He saw a figure hovering above him, smiling.

  “I hear you’ve been looking for me,” Aurora York said.

  Cecile (York) Peterson

  Sister to Aurora York; retired mathematician, London School of Economics

  OUR FATHER WAS A SPY.

  That’s how we got to Spain, my dear. He was a spy during World War Two, and he thought we’d be safer here than in England. And I suppose, given the Blitz, he was right. Father worked for British Intelligence on Operation Fortitude. It’s quite famous, actually. They distracted the Germans from the Normandy invasion by pretending the Allies were planning bigger attacks elsewhere. . . . Oh, yes, dear. They’ve written books about it. Look it up.

  Father worked with a Spanish double agent whom the Germans trusted. It was all rather productive—but not for our family. Father left us in a small house near Valencia, my mother, Aurora, and me. Then he left us for good. He was murdered in 1945, eight months after Normandy. They found his body
in a Barcelona hotel room, strangled by a wire. I suppose he was double-­crossed. One never knows. “Secrecy is part of the life we’ve chosen,” Father used to say.

  My sister and I were quite different. Aurora was a free spirit. She dressed in odd, mismatched clothes; she liked to dance about first thing in the morning; liked to climb trees, run out in the rain, smear tomato paste on her face, things like that. I was more studious. Proper decorum. Stay dry. My mother’s daughter, I suppose. Numbers intrigued me. Math. Science. I preferred things orderly. Aurora liked things messy.

  You could describe Aurora and Frankie that way. Messy.

  To be accurate, I’d heard of “Francisco” years before I met him. My sister encountered him when she was quite young, in the woods here in Spain. I don’t know what they said or did that afternoon, but whatever it was, he became part of her vocabulary. “One day, when I marry Francisco . . . ,” she would say. Or “When I get a house one day with Francisco . . .” Honestly, I thought he was imaginary. She was only seven or eight, and you know how young girls are. Anyhow, being the daughters of a spy, truth and lies were often indistinguishable in our home.

  It wasn’t until she ran away in America that I realized “Francisco” was an actual person. Aurora was a teenager by this point, and that summer she’d gone to Tennessee with our mother and new stepfather for a medical conference. He was a physician. Scottish. Awful temper. He and Aurora were constantly fighting—­she hated the idea that my mother would replace my father—­and they got into a horrible row during that trip. She had this new yellow suitcase, and when my mother came back to the hotel room, the suitcase was gone and so was Aurora. They stayed a few weeks searching, but eventually gave up and came home.

  I remember them walking in the door, two ­people, not three, and feeling so cheated, as if they’d driven off with all my things and returned empty-­handed. What childhood I had left with my sister, my stepfather took away. I never forgave him for that. Perhaps I never forgave Aurora, either, leaving Mother and me alone with that man.

  Over the months, we got postcards saying she was all right, but with precious few details, except that she believed “Francisco” was somewhere in America, too, she could feel it. I dismissed that as more ramblings from my nutter sister. I frankly don’t know how she survived.

  Then one day, in 1955, she rang up our flat in London. I must have been twenty-­three, so she would have been, what, eighteen or nineteen? I answered the phone and I heard her say, “Cecile, you must come over. I’m getting married!” Not even a hello. I was stunned to hear her voice. I said, “Aurora? Is that really you?” And she said, “He finally found me, Cecile.” And I said, “Who found you?” And she said, “Francisco, of course!”

  That’s the way it worked between the two of them. Long periods of absence—­then crazy, intense romance. I do believe she and Frankie belonged together, even if they rarely stayed together. It was as if they had a secret they were bound to, which made them joyful most of the time and insane the rest.

  But in love? Oh, yes, dear. Frankie and Aurora were more deeply in love than any two ­people I have ever encountered, and that included my own marriage, which lasted forty-­two years. I remember Frankie practicing or composing, and my sister would come up behind him and kiss his ear—­always his ear—­and he’d say, “Aurora means dawn,” and they would laugh, whatever that was about. They sang little duets together. There was this one Spanish song about a railroad car. Laaaa-­paaan-­de-­ro la-­la-­la, la-­la-­la-­la-­la. Do you know it? . . . I just thought, being here in Spain . . . Well. Anyhow.

  They were at their happiest just before Frankie became famous, which is when they had their wedding. They were living in New Orleans. I booked passage to be Aurora’s maid of honor. My stepfather forbade my mother going. Can you believe that? He said, “The little scrubber has caused us enough headaches.” Honestly, the man was poison.

  So I traveled to the United States by myself, but when I got to New Orleans, I discovered that since neither Frankie nor Aurora had the proper paperwork, they could not be legally wed.

  That didn’t stop them. They threw their own wedding—­at a nightclub in the French Quarter. . . . No, I can’t recall the name. But I remember it began at two a.m.—­after the establishment closed. There were lots of musicians there. Fats Domino played the piano. He was a friend of Frankie’s. And quite a few jazz artists, too.

  That was the first time I heard Frankie perform. He was brilliant, really. I understood why my sister fell for him. He sang like a nightingale and was severely attractive. At the time, he was working with a group of—­is it “doo-­wop music”? Yes . . . Exactly . . . Each of them had a different vocal tone, one very low, one very high, one in the middle, and they did a song called “Earth Angel” for my sister. Frankie actually got down on one knee when the song asked, “Will you be mine?” and Aurora started crying when he put a ring on her finger. I was truly glad for her. She was my sister, after all. And when Aurora was happy, no one could be happier. She would grab your hands and swing your arms and say, “Isn’t this wonderful!” as if she were a little girl.

  Maybe that’s why she and Frankie were attracted to each other. They were hardly allowed to be children when they were children, so when they were adults, they often acted like, well, children. Let’s just say it. Sleeping late. Missing appointments. Always laughing and apologizing their way through things. But they weren’t children, were they? And that’s where their troubles started.

  When she would leave him for long stretches, I would scold her, but she always had an excuse, that he needed to work on his music, or she needed to get through something. He would send her money. She would send it back. He would phone. She would hang up. She knew there were other women. It didn’t faze her. I would say, “Aurora, if he’s your husband, you belong together,” and she would say, “Oh, Cecile, we are together. We’re just apart.”

  They kept a lot of secrets. Father would have approved. But it left me in the dark about many issues—­including whatever the big split was about. To this day, I couldn’t tell you. I imagine the marriage to that actress did not help. I won’t even say her name, it upset me so much. I don’t know what Frankie was thinking. Have you seen photos of my sister when she was younger? Prettier than any actress, my dear. Aurora could have had any man she set her mind to. She chose Frankie. There it is, really.

  Do you know the Latin motto at the London School of Economics? Rerum cognoscere causas. That means, “To know the causes of things.” But there was so much I didn’t know about Frankie and Aurora, so perhaps I’m not being very helpful for your report. I can only confirm that he was the cause of a lot of joy for her—­and a lot of heartache. Maybe because of that, he didn’t think I liked him. Whenever they visited, he would hug me and say, “Cecile, let me play you a song.” And I would say, “No, that’s quite all right.” I wasn’t going to let his music charm me. Artists believe that art makes all behavior acceptable. I do not agree. And I told him so.

  Looking back, perhaps that was harsh. But I’ve always been the practical one. Aurora understood that. She used to laugh and say, “You’re better off if he doesn’t play you his music, Cecile. It only takes that boy and his guitar a ­couple of minutes to change your life.”

  33

  FRANKIE AND AURORA. A SYMPHONY IN ITSELF.

  I have spoken before about love and music, the tangled duet. Suffice it to say, there was a reason that, for all his amorous adventures, Frankie Presto felt empty with nearly every woman he was with.

  Mea culpa.

  The truth is, I do not share well. I want you to myself. And you, my precious acolytes, want me, too—­even at the expense of others. You follow me to lonely practice rooms, faraway stages, late hours inside smoky recording studios, your weary fingers banging piano keys, your tired lips clamped around a mouthpiece, playing on, forsaking those who love you and who you should love back. They will lure you
. I will lure you more. It is the price I exact. And the one you pay.

  Frankie saw this early on. One night during his time with Duke Ellington, the famous bandleader had two attractive women waiting in a long black car.

  “Do you like those pretty ladies, Francisco?”

  Frankie grinned.

  “I agree. They are fine. But music is my mistress. Do you know what that means?”

  Frankie shook his head.

  “It means those ladies will be gone by morning, but my piano will still be here.”

  As a boy, Frankie did not understand. As a man, he understood completely. Over the decades, no matter whose bed he landed in, I was Frankie’s mistress. And I could steal him back from anyone.

  Anyone.

  Except Aurora York.

  Frankie fell in love with Aurora as a child and he would never love anyone that way again. It was that simple. He thought about her, he pursued her, and every time he lost her, he pursued her again. From that first day in the Spanish woods to that fateful night at Woodstock, theirs was what you humans label a true love story.

  But all love stories are symphonies.

  And, like symphonies, they have four movements:

  • Allegro, a quick and spirited opening

  • Adagio, a slow turn

  • Minuet/Scherzo short steps in ¾ time

  • Rondo, a repeating theme, interrupted by various passages

  I always knew where Frankie and Aurora were heading. Given his musicality, how could they not follow form?

  34

  1955

  * * *

  THEIR FIRST MOVEMENT. ALLEGRO. QUICK. LIVELY. It began in Spain and picked up speed in Louisiana. They found a place to live, renting a one-­room apartment above a New Orleans drugstore. Aurora slept in a single bed and Frankie slept on a couch in the other room, still shy to the ways of love and mindful of Aurora’s warning that “Everything up to now does not count. We are starting fresh.”