The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto (25 page)

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.”

Each night, over red beans and rice, Frankie told Aurora about his adventures, his boat ride from Spain and meeting Django on the docks and the orphanage and Hank Williams and the Grand Ole Opry. She leaned in with her cheek in her hands, marveling at all the places he had been. She did not say much about her own travels, and Frankie did not ask about the bearded man in Detroit, or any other people she might have been with. But sometimes, in the morning, while he was practicing his guitar, she would look at him and cry a little. Once he asked, “What’s wrong?” and she said, “Why didn’t you find me sooner?” And he said, “I ran after you that night,” and she said, “I was ashamed,” and he said, “It didn’t stop me,” and he told her about going door to door with the hairless dog in different cities.