The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto

by Mitch Albom

  In Western music, things resolve. A suspended fourth moves back to the third. A diminished chord slides to its tonic. Dissonance to consonance. I make peace that way.

  Humans follow no such rules. So that night on Claret Street, Danza Rubio, the woman who’d stepped out of the pale green Chevrolet, was startled by the boy running toward her. And, having had no contact with her brother, Baffa, for many years, she was suspicious at the sudden appearance of a child. She stood motionless when Frankie tried to hug her. And when he exclaimed, “I am your son!” and told her the story Baffa had told him (about his wife, the car, the accident in America) she grew angry and broke the truth to Frankie right there in the street, like a series of hard rim shots on a snare drum.

  Thwack!

  She was not his mother.

  Thwack!

  She was not Baffa’s wife.

  Thwack!

  Baffa never had a wife.

  Thwack!

  He could never get a wife.

  Thwack!

  He had never been to America.

  Thwack!

  There was no accident.

  Thwack!

  There was no grave site.

  Thwack!

  Baffa was a liar.

  Thwack!

  He hadn’t spoken to her in years.

  Thwack!

  She assumed he was dead.

  All of this took less than three minutes. Each blow stunned Frankie into a deeper silence. By the end, when Danza’s husband gruffly interjected, “Look, boy, we’re not giving you any money, if that’s what you expect,” the dazed child felt his jaw trembling. It took all he had to grab his guitar case and run. Danza yelled after him, but he did not turn back. He disappeared into falling snowflakes under pools of lamplight, tears rolling down his cheeks.

  I have said that music allows for quick creation. But it is nothing compared with what you humans can destroy in a single conversation.

  Burt Bacharach

  Songwriter, performer, composer, producer

  FRANKIE PRESTO LOVED THE STUDIO. HE WOULD HAVE LIVED IN THERE IF THEY’D HAD A BED.

  Oh . . . sure . . . my name is Burt Bacharach . . . America . . . Los Angeles. But I met Frankie in New York. I produced his song “Our Secret” back in 1964. Great ballad. Did a reverb thing on his voice that made it eerie. And the string part we came up with around midnight. I started making calls and found a ­couple of violinists to come in at three or four in the morning. Frankie and I were from different parts of the world, but we had one thing in common: we didn’t leave a studio until it was perfect. Some musicians don’t like that. I keep them there for twenty takes, thirty takes. But what’s the point in making art if it isn’t right?

  Frankie got that, you know? He was a beautiful soul—­and if I had known he was still playing guitar I would have flown around the world to hear it. I really had no idea where he’d gone—­or if he was still alive—­until I heard about him dying a few days ago. Was it really on the stage? . . . My God . . . that’s awful. . . .

  The first time I heard him play? . . . Yes, I do. That’s really how we met. I was at Bell Sound Studios in New York, before a recording session with Dionne Warwick. I got there early and the big room was empty except for this one guy who had his back to us. He wore headphones and was leaning over an electric guitar. I asked the engineer to bring up the sound, but before I could tell the guy to get out, I was frozen. His playing was incredible. He was switching between classical riffs and the jazz tune, “Body and Soul.” I said, “Who the hell is this?” And the engineer said, “You won’t believe it. That’s Frankie Presto.” And I said, “The singer?” and he said, “The singer plays a mean guitar.”

  I guess he had been cutting a record just before us, and everyone had left but he’d stayed in there another two hours, messing around on all the instruments, moving from the drums to the piano to the guitars. My guys were coming in now, so I clicked on the room microphone and said, “Hey, sorry to interrupt genius, but we’re on the clock.”

  He pulled off the headphones and waved like he was apologizing. I said over the speaker, “That was fantastic, you should have blasted it all over the building,” and he leaned into the mike and said, “I was just messing around.”

  He came out and I introduced myself and he knew who I was right away, which surprised me, because I wasn’t recording back then, just writing, but he said he’d really liked some things I’d done, “Baby, It’s You” by the Shirelles and “Only Love Can Break a Heart,” the Gene Pitney song. He said something about trumpets and flugelhorns—­which was unusual for a rock and roll guy—­so I said, “Where did you learn about horn sections?” and he said, “Traveling with Duke Ellington,” and I laughed and said, “What were you, his water boy?” I mean, he was way too young for Duke.

  He was taller than I thought, and very striking. When the band guys came in, even they were staring at him. He had a presence, you know? And he was wearing a bright red sports coat, which didn’t hurt. When I told him we were recording Dionne Warwick, he said he loved her voice and asked if he could stay. Normally, I don’t like outside distractions when I work, but Frankie had a good vibe, you know? He was musical, you could feel it. So I said, “You can hang out here in the booth if you want.” And he said okay.

  The song we were doing was for a movie called A House Is Not a Home. Hal David wrote the lyrics. I wrote the music. To be honest, we were rerecording it because Brook Benton had done the original but I wanted Dionne to take a shot at it. We did a lot of takes with a full orchestra, string section, background singers—­like I said, that’s how I worked—­and I sort of forgot about Frankie sitting back there. Then, during a playback, I happened to turn around as Dionne was singing the part:

  But a room is not a house,

  And a house is not a home

  When the two of us are far apart

  And one of us has a broken heart.

  I saw Frankie crying.

  “You all right?” I said.

  “Yeah,” he said.

  But you could see it got to him. He didn’t even wipe away the tears. I didn’t learn until much later that he was an orphan. No mother. No father. “A House Is Not a Home.” No wonder, right? Could there be a tougher thing to hear?

  25

  1950

  * * *

  “DID YOU HEAR ME?” THE NUN YELLED. “I SAID LINE UP!”

  The children lined up.

  “Now move!”

  They marched to the cafeteria. A tall boy shoved Frankie in his back.

  “Knock it off,” Frankie whispered.

  “Make me,” the taller kid said.

  At this point in our story, Frankie was either thirteen or fourteen. He hadn’t decided. Once he’d discovered that Baffa was not his real papa, Frankie ignored the birth date he’d been told, figuring that was a lie as well.

  “Begin!” the nun barked.

  The children, standing by cafeteria tables, recited their prayers out loud. Then they sat down, and the nuns poured orange juice into their glasses, followed by spoonfuls of cod liver oil.

  “It tastes horrible,” one boy complained.

  “Be grateful you have it. Drink!”

  Frankie lifted the juice to his lips, and the sweet smell brought back memories of Villareal, the orange carts rolling down the streets. But such memories only made Frankie angry now. Baffa was never his father. The woman in the photo was never his mother. His only identification papers listed him as “Presto”—­a name he didn’t even know. It was all a lie. There was nothing sweet about oranges anymore.

  At this point, Frankie’s life was in rigid formation, a 4/4 cadence, with a tempo best described as mosso—­or agitated. He’d been living for three years in the Greater Detroit Catholic Home for Orphans, sharing a bedroom with nine other boys. He had been taken there when t
he police discovered him sleeping in an alley behind a restaurant, after he’d missed the train that took Django and the Ellington band to their next stop. (By the time Frankie found a way to the station, they were gone. He sat and cried, his elbows on his guitar case, until a man in a uniform told him he couldn’t sit there anymore and should “go home to your mother.”)

  He returned to begging and eating from trash cans. The ones behind the restaurant offered the best scraps. He was actually surprised when the police found him (he’d become quite skilled at hiding from authorities) but was happy when the nuns said he’d get his own bed. He accepted their blue pants and white shirt and black leather shoes and he didn’t even mind when they threw away his old clothes saying that, unlike his soul, they were beyond salvation.

  Frankie had been scrawny when he’d arrived, but in three years he’d sprouted into a lanky teenager, with prominent white teeth, large hands (a great boost to his guitar playing) and a deep set to his blue eyes that drew nervous smiles from the girls in his class.

  The boys were another matter. Children in orphanages take note of the slightest preference, and the other boys hated that Frankie played the guitar so well that the nuns let him accompany them in Christmas and Easter ceremonies. Or that he got private time in the library each night to work on his music. He was different, so they looked for ways to mock him, like the slight accent that still tinged his English.

  “Hey, Spic,” they would tease. “No spic-­a-­the-­language?”

  “Hey, Coconut. Are you brown or white?”

  “Hey, Gyppo, tell us about your gypsy friend again.”

  One night the tall boy, named Rafael, handed out cupcakes after his birthday celebration. He deliberately skipped over Frankie.

  “They don’t eat in the alley where you came from,” he whispered.

  “I don’t want your cupcake,” Frankie said, “if it makes me as dumb as you.”

  Instantly, they were scuffling on the floor. The other boys cheered and whooped. Frankie socked Rafael in the eye, and Rafael howled. He pushed Frankie down, ran to Frankie’s bed, reached beneath it, and pulled out Frankie’s guitar. Frankie jumped on him and they wrestled, the guitar slamming around between them. By the time they were separated, Frankie saw the bottom string had snapped—­the same string that had once turned blue on the British docks.

  Frankie burst into tears, screaming, “I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you!” He tackled Rafael again and had to be restrained by the woman from the cafeteria. As punishment, both boys were forced to sleep on the floor that night, Rafael in the rectory, Frankie in the kitchen. Frankie stared at the ceiling and felt an emptiness that he’d never felt before—­but not because of the fight.

  Until that moment, his strings had never broken.

  This was quite unusual, seeing that guitar strings often break after a few months of use. Frankie figured it was because he had played carefully, even gently, as his teacher had taught him.

  “Do not attack the strings, Francisco.”

  “No, Maestro.”

  “Coax them.”

  “Yes, Maestro.”

  “Make them hunger for your next note. Same as in life.”

  “In life, Maestro?”

  “When you want someone to listen to you, will you attack them?”

  “No, Maestro.”

  “No, you will not. You will make them hear the beauty of what you are offering, and they will want it for themselves.”

  Frankie missed those lessons. He even missed lighting El Maestro’s cigarettes and cleaning up his wine spills. He cherished the guitar; it was, as Django had suggested, his most precious possession. The strings were all he had left from his teacher. And now someone had broken one.

  That night, Frankie could not sleep. He thought about El Maestro. He thought about Aurora York, the girl in the tree, and he wondered if his teacher was right, had she been a fairy? It seemed so long ago. He did not often pray by himself (since the nuns were always leading them in prayer someplace) but he closed his eyes and asked God if he could please go home to Spain. He was tired of America. He crawled under a long table and lay on his side, humming “How Great Thou Art.”

  Minutes later, his eyes opened. He heard a scratching noise from outside the building. He pulled a chair to the wall and climbed to the window above the sink. At the sight of something out in the alley, his face changed, and he quickly pushed the window open and wedged himself through, falling to the ground.

  What happened next may seem incredible. I can only tell you it is true.

  Frankie opened his eyes to feel the wet tongue of the hairless dog, licking his cheeks.

  26

  WE SHOULD SPEAK ABOUT THOSE STRINGS.

  You know that they came from Carmencita, Frankie’s beautiful, dark-­haired mother.

  You know that she intended them for her husband, El Maestro, who was really Frankie’s father.

  You know that they sat unused for nine years—­inside a purse in El Maestro’s closet—­until he gave them to Frankie the day the boy left Spain.

  What you do not know is where Carmencita acquired them.

  Or from whom.

  It happened on the last morning of her life. Sleep had been restless, the unborn child stirring inside her. Carmencita rose with the dawn, dressing quietly so as not to wake her husband. She pulled on a shawl and walked toward the Mijares River. A mist hung over the earth, washing all colors in a filmy white. It was so thick she almost didn’t see a gypsy family sitting on the riverbank. The man had large ears and thinning hair. The woman next to him seemed older. Behind them was a little girl with long auburn braids. She was brushing a horse.

  “God be with you, señora,” the man said.

  These were dangerous words during the war. But Carmencita replied, “God be with you as well.”

  “Your baby comes soon,” the woman said.

  Carmencita put her hand on her belly.

  “May I offer you a scarf?” The woman reached into a wooden box of possessions.

  “I brought no money,” Carmencita said.

  “We are not selling these things,” the man replied. “We are giving them away.”

  “My husband thinks of others—­”

  “We have no need for them—­”

  “He is a man of God—­”

  “I am but a horse trader—­”

  “They want to kill him, señora!”

  The woman began to cry. Carmencita lowered her hand from her belly. So many in her country were like this, fleeing from one side or the other. The war was ruining lives. Her husband had lost his eyes. Her brother had disappeared. Priests were being hunted, and families like this one were on the run. She wondered about the world her baby was about to enter.

  “You can stay with us if you wish,” Carmencita said.

  The gypsies looked at each other.

  “Where?”

  “In our home. We do not have much room, but you are welcome.”

  “But we are strangers to you.”

  “Tell me your names and you will not be strangers.”

  The man smiled. “Does a name make such a difference?”

  “Of course not,” Carmencita replied. She knew, in war, it was sometimes better not to know a name.

  “Thank you, kind woman,” the man said. “But we could not endanger you that way.”

  He held his wife’s hand and summoned their daughter, who put down the horse brush.

  “We have little to offer in return for your generosity. But perhaps a song?”

  The child began to sing, a soft gypsy melody.

  “Such a pretty voice,” Carmencita said.

  “You enjoy music?” the man asked.

  “My husband is a guitarist.”

  “As am I. Or was. I would play songs to the Lord. Sadly, my guitar is gone.” />
  “Taken,” his wife said.

  “I am sorry,” Carmencita said.

  “Your husband, will he teach your child to play?”

  “It is all he speaks about.”

  “Then you must have these.”

  He reached into the box and removed a set of strings, coiled together by a yellow band. They seemed brand new, almost shiny.

  “I could not,” she protested.

  “For your kindness.”

  “It is not nec—­”

  “Please. To connect the child and the father. They are special strings.” He lowered his voice. “They have lives inside them.”

  His wife slapped his arm. “He means they were made from silk, and the silk came from worms, and the worms were once alive.”

  She gave him a harsh look. “Do not speak in riddles.”

  He smiled and rocked back and forth. When his wife turned to tend to the horse, he leaned in toward Carmencita.

  “I don’t mean worms,” he whispered.

  He removed from his pocket a rosary, with simple black beads and a small black cross. Carmencita realized the rosary was held together by a guitar string like the ones he’d just handed her. As he pulled on both ends, the string began to glow blue, like the inside of a flame.

  “Le duy vas xalaven pe,” he said, a gypsy expression that translates to “the hands wash each other”—­meaning we are all connected.

  When his wife approached, the man stuffed the rosary back in his pocket. He gazed at the white sky.

  “Best to be on your way, señora.”

  “Are you certain you won’t come?”

  “God will protect us. As I pray He protects you.”

  “I will light a candle for your family at the basilica.”

  “San Pascual?”

  “Do you know it?”

  The man’s eyes grew far away.