The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto

by Mitch Albom

For her part, Aurora worked four days a week at a charity thrift shop, took up oil painting, rode her bicycle along the river, and spoke to Kai on the phone every evening, if only to say good night. On weekends, Frankie would sometimes play her new songs he had written and mix them in with old ones composed by someone else. She never failed to guess which were his.

  “How do you always know?” he would ask.

  “I can hear you in anything,” she said.

  She had encouraged her husband to teach, believing, with the Rubio name, he could keep his anonymity while still pursuing his passion. But over time, Frankie’s copious talent became common knowledge at the music store (you cannot hold me down) and after the owner introduced him to a visiting young rock star—­and the two men played several blues songs together—­word spread that a master guitarist was laboring in a Staten Island retail outlet, and accomplished players, some very well known, began dropping by when they came to New York, some for tips, some for collaboration, some just to see if the rumors were true. The owner did not mind, as it brought prestige to his establishment, and he sold more guitars.

  “Rubio” was how he was known (“You going to see Rubio?” “I heard Rubio was cutting it up!”), and at one point, Frankie wondered if it wasn’t getting to be too much. He enjoyed the chance to play with talented artists away from a stage. But he was taken aback at how they pursued him. He had become, to his surprise, a rather good teacher, sharing small tips that went back to his days with El Maestro. Over a two-­year span, by my count, Frankie was visited by—­and consulted with—­eighty-­three professional musicians, including members of Bon Jovi, Pearl Jam, and the E Street Band, as well as the bassist Chris­tian McBride, the guitarist Earl Klugh, the rhythm and blues singer KEM, and the singer/songwriter Warren Zevon.

  Only a handful of visitors, including Lyle Lovett and Darlene Love, knew who he really was. They vowed to keep the secret and they kept their word.

  But one day, at their rented house, the phone rang, Aurora answered, and a man who said he worked for Rolling Stone magazine asked, “Is Frankie Presto living there?”

  Aurora quickly hung up.

  Passing tones. Kai graduated with highest honors. She joined a conservatory in Boston. With their daughter gone, Frankie and Aurora moved back to New Orleans. That phone call had concerned them. And Aurora had always been happiest in the Crescent City, where Frankie proposed marriage in front of the Mr. Bingle window display.

  They bought a small apartment in the Garden District. Aurora made coffee for Frankie in the morning, and he made tea for her at night. One afternoon, she took him to a community center where she’d been volunteering, teaching art, and she told the children that Mr. Rubio was a musician. Before you knew it, he was guiding a young ensemble that included a piano, an electric bass, two drummers, a trumpet, and a chunky teenage boy with a trombone. They played funk and jazz and the drummer liked to rap. They called themselves the “Big Mess Band.” Frankie found himself looking forward to their young enthusiasm, even if their technique was less than accomplished.

  By my count, which is always accurate, this was the 372nd band that Frankie Presto had played with.

  There would only be two more.

  The guitarist Les Paul was one of my disciples, blessed with gobs of me inside him and a curious mind that led him to innovations in the electric guitar, tape recording, and overdubbing. As a teenager, he stretched a single string across a railroad tie and tried to amplify it with the insides of a telephone receiver. A few years later, he took a chunk of pine, attached a pickup, and invented a guitar they affectionately called “the log,” the precursor of solid-­bodied electrics played around the world today.

  Yet his greatest gift was his perseverance. A car crash in 1948 left Paul and his wife, Mary Ford, in the bottom of a ravine, undiscovered for three hours. His ribs, nose, spleen, pelvis, and collarbone were damaged. But worst of all, his right arm was broken in multiple places, and the doctors considered amputation before finally setting it at a permanent right angle. He never stopped playing. Not then, not decades later, when arthritis chewed his body until his hands were more like claws. He continued to make music into his nineties, playing in a small club, refusing to let go of me.

  In New Orleans, Frankie Presto saw his own body start to deteriorate, making his playing a challenge as well. Stiffness in his left hand was now a constant, and humid weather made it painful to complete a song. He needed reading glasses to follow musical transcriptions, and his lower back, from years of hunching over, left him permanently in distress, reaching behind with both hands when he rose and bending backward with a groan.

  “I’m creaking,” he would sigh to Aurora.

  “Someone’s getting old,” she’d say.

  “But not you.”

  “Nope. I could still climb a tree.”

  “Mmm,” Frankie would grumble.

  58

  IN THE CALENDAR YEAR OF 2005, ONE YEAR BEFORE FRANKIE TURNED SEVENTY, a great storm descended on the state of Louisiana. Homeowners were warned to evacuate, but many remained. Aurora had joined a nearby church, a small congregation in an old brick building. When forecasts of the storm became dire, most of the members departed, but the elderly priest vowed not to leave, no matter how high the water.

  “You have to go,” Aurora implored him.

  “I started this church fifty-­two years ago,” he said. “If God wants me to perish here, so be it.”

  When Aurora told this to Frankie, he shook his head. All his life, he’d seen devotion and suffering go hand in hand.

  “We’re not staying,” he said. Aurora agreed. But when Frankie pulled up with their loaded car, she was gone. Rain had already started. He drove quickly to the church, and found her there with several younger members, boarding up windows.

  “What are you doing?” Frankie said.

  “If he’s going to stay, we have to help him.”

  “They’re calling it a hurricane now. We need to leave.”

  “Just a few minutes.”

  As the winds outside blew stronger, Frankie helped where he could, holding up boards as others frantically drilled and hammered. Two teenage boys hurried a large wooden beam up adjoining ladders, rushing to get it positioned by the big window. They swung it too fast and it smashed through the glass. Rain blew in, and the first teen lost his balance and threw the beam in the air to grab the ladder, causing the other boy to do the same. The first boy fell off the ladder anyway, thudding to the ground, and others yelled, “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” he said. “Just landed hard.”

  Only then did Frankie hear a moan and look over to see Aurora on the floor, holding her head. The thrown beam had struck her from behind.

  “Good Lord,” the priest yelled, rushing to her.

  Frankie pushed everyone out of the way and leaned over his wife. She was bleeding slightly from her scalp, and blinking her eyes.

  “Help me get her to the car,” Frankie yelled.

  “It’s fine, I’m fine,” she said.

  “Come on!”

  A half hour later, dripping wet, they were in the emergency room of a hospital, where a doctor stitched the gash as Frankie watched the halls filling with patients, many of them older, arriving in fear of the storm that was upon them. Aurora was assured that the cut was not deep, but she had suffered a mild concussion, and was assigned a bed and instructed to stay awake for observation.

  “I feel all right,” she said. “Just a headache.”

  “Will we be safe here?” Frankie asked the doctor. “With the storm that’s coming?”

  “Yes, yes, of course,” the doctor said, rushing off to other patients.

  Within hours, the hurricane was blowing hard through New Orleans. That night, certain levees protecting the city broke. Rushing waters from Lake Pontchartrain (where Frankie first played with Elvis Presley) and the
Mississippi River (where Frankie and Aurora walked as newlyweds) flooded the streets and raised water levels higher and higher, climbing the walls as if bringing their past back to them. The hospital became a repository for not only the sick and wounded, but for those seeking shelter, food, or protection. Power was lost. Doctors operated by flashlight. Food dwindled. Supplies were not replenished. Everyone from the lower floors was moved to upper ones, and the crowding made things even more uncomfortable. It was late summer and the heat became stifling. Some fixed windows were smashed for ventilation.

  Throughout this pandemonium, Frankie never left Aurora’s side. In the corner bed of a crowded room, he kept her awake with stories, conversation, even singing.

  “I’m fine, you know,” she whispered.

  “I know.”

  “I’m not leaving you yet.”

  “No way.”

  “But I am going first.”

  “Is that right?”

  “A long time from now.”

  “A long time.”

  “But still first.”

  “Not fair,” Frankie said.

  “Yes, fair,” she replied.

  “How do you figure?”

  “If you die first, what do I have?” Aurora asked.

  “You have Kai.”

  “True.” She looked off. “But daughters have their own lives. You can’t smother them. She’ll get married. Have children.”

  “Well, I can ask the same thing,” Frankie said. “If you go first, what would I have? Besides Kai?”

  She looked at him as if he was joking.

  “You’ll have your music.”

  Frankie snorted lightly, but said nothing. (I, on the other hand, knew exactly what she meant.)

  “ ‘Parlez-­Moi d’Amour,’ ” Aurora said. “Sing it to me. Keep me awake.”

  “My French is rusty,” Frankie said.

  “You have to sing it.” She grinned. “I’m the patient. It’s a prescription.”

  He sighed and sang her the song as he remembered it, softly, until an elderly woman in the next bed turned their way and said, “Louder, cher. You got a sweet voice.”

  Frankie sang louder and the entire room—­with six beds, close together—­quieted in the darkness. The patients and their family members pulled open the thin curtains that separated them, grateful for the distraction of his performance.

  Parlez-­moi d’amour,

  Redites-­moi des choses tendres.

  (Speak to me of love,

  Tell me again, the tender things.)

  When he finished, they clapped politely and someone said, “Do another!” Frankie rolled his eyes at Aurora as if to say, “Look at what you started,” but Aurora smiled and yelled out—­in a mock American accent—­“Hey, fella, do you know ‘I Want To Love You’ by Frankie Presto?” An older man said, “That’s an oldie but a goodie,” and soon Frankie was singing the biggest hit of his career, with no accompaniment but the rain pounding on the windows.

  I want to love you

  I will be true

  No one will love you

  The way I do . . .

  As he went on, the others slowly joined in, like a campfire sing-­along, until everyone in the darkened room was contributing to the familiar tune, a high voice, a low one, an off-­key screech, singing together in brave defiance of the storm outside.

  Oh, if you let me

  Show my love to you

  Then by tomorrow

  You’ll love me tooooo!

  They held on to the last word, someone rattled a spoon like a drumroll, and the others laughed and yelled, “Whoo-­hoo!” It was, to Frankie, the best version he’d ever heard.

  Everyone joins a band in this life.

  Sometimes just to be brave.

  Frankie grinned and looked down at his wife.

  “Aurora?”

  Her eyes were closed.

  59

  THE FATAL STROKE, DOCTORS EXPLAINED, WAS MOST LIKELY BROUGHT ON BY THE TRAUMA OF HER EARLIER BLOW. They could not be certain; Aurora was sixty-­eight years old. Nurses had rushed in with flashlights, but attempts to revive her were futile. She was gone that fast. A young physician offered condolences then rushed to help other storm victims. Frankie slumped in mute disbelief as orderlies entered with a gurney. When they took her body, he fell to the floor and crouched against the wall, rocking back and forth, holding his arms as if freezing. The streets outside were flooded. The hospital was like a war zone. There was nowhere to go. No place to scream. Once again, his life was altered by rushing waters.

  It was four weeks before they could bury her.

  At the graveside funeral, Kai held her father’s hand and wept. Aurora’s fellow churchgoers held hands and wept. Cecile (York) Peterson flew in from London and held Kai’s hand and wept. She also delivered a warm, economic eulogy that spoke about her sister Aurora as brave and smart and—­sometimes—­the happiest woman she had ever known, a person who clearly thought of others before herself. The Big Mess Band from the community center played a funeral dirge, a New Orleans tradition, performing “Just a Closer Walk with Thee.”

  Frankie did not join in any of it. He did not sing a word. He stood to the side of the ser­vice, looking a thousand miles away.

  I have said Aurora York was my only rival for Frankie’s heart. On that day, she vanquished me. Not a note of music was left inside him. His desperate love for her, with no release, went crashing into his inner walls like the waters of that flood, drowning me out, rendering him silent. He kept seeing her face, asking him to sing in the hospital. He kept seeing her as a little girl, asking him to play in a tree. He kept thinking about the old guitar he had left behind, and its one blue string, still unused.

  “What if you need to save a life?” she had asked.

  It was too painful to consider. His mind shut down. His eyes went glassy. He was empty as a hole.

  At the end of the ceremony, he remained by the grave, waiting until everyone left him alone. Then he squatted, took something from his pocket and pushed it into the earth: a small, round flower made from a guitar string. His eyes welled up and he lost his balance and fell forward, the wet grass soaking his hands and knees. He whispered her name again and again.

  “A long time from now,” he gasped. “You said ‘a long time from now.’ ”

  Everyone joins a band in this life.

  Some of them break your heart.

  60

  THE REMAINING YEARS OF FRANKIE’S LIFE WERE SPENT AS FAR AS HE COULD GET FROM HIS MEMORIES, in the city of Manila in the nation of the Philippines, teaching classical guitar at the University of Santo Tomas. His daughter, Kai, at her father’s request, had used her symphony connections to secure an interview.

  “It’s so far away,” she protested.

  “I know,” he said.

  Frankie’s Catholic upbringing was helpful in his hiring. He never told his new employers that he had given up on prayer, church, and God. Instead he took the teaching position, which paid modestly, and lived in a small apartment on España Boulevard, which allowed him to walk back and forth to campus, crossing to the Plaza Intramuros under the massive, baroque-­style Arch of the Centuries.

  He found Filipino students polite and respectful, and he taught them one on one, patiently, firmly. They admired his knowledge. But he rarely played for them. Nor did he join an ensemble or a faculty orchestra. He was there for one reason, to be someplace nobody would find him.

  Only at night, alone by a window that overlooked a bus terminal, did he touch a guitar. He played slow baroque melodies by Gaspar Sanz and old blues by Robert Johnson. But his fingers now hurt all the time, the arthritis ravaging his nerve-­damaged left hand, and a permanent stiffness had settled into his shoulders and neck. He no longer ran. He no longer cooked penne pasta. He no longer restored amplifiers or made tea or
took part in any routine he had shared with his wife. Loneliness was like an ogre hovering over those activities.

  Aurora had once said that, besides Kai, he would have his music when she was gone, and she was right. But I brought him little comfort. He wrote one song in the months after her death and he never wrote anything again.

  In the calendar year of 2009, Kai came to visit at the close of a symphony tour, and informed Frankie that she had been selected for the prestigious International Francisco Tárrega Guitar Competition in Spain. It was a celebrated festival, more than forty years old, and this year was a special honor since it marked the ­hundredth anniversary of Tárrega’s death. Because of that, the festival and competition would be held, for the first time, in the town of Tárrega’s birth, Villareal.

  “Papa, I want you to come.”

  “No, Kai.”

  “It’s important to me.”

  “I can’t.”

  “You taught me Tárrega. It was the first thing you taught me. Everything I know about his music is from you.”

  “There are too many . . .”

  “What? Memories?”

  “Yes.”

  “Memories are not in places, Papa. Memories are in your mind. They’re here, too. In this”—­she looked around—­“stupidly tiny apartment.”

  Frankie rubbed his face and pushed back his hair, which, although thinned and gray, still mussed over his forehead.

  “Do you ever use a brush?” Kai asked, trying to make him smile.

  “Who for?” he said.

  She looked away.

  “I miss her, too, Papa.”

  “I know.”

  He stared at his daughter and how beautiful she had grown, in her early thirties now, peaking as he was shrinking.

  “Will you stay a few days?” he asked.

  “I’m here until Friday.”

  “A few days after that?”

  “I’ll have to make a call.”

  “You can use my phone.” He motioned to a desk.