Katie Up and Down the Hall: The True Story of How One Dog Turned Five Neighbors Into a Family

by Glenn Plaskin

  “Pearl had a broken heart,” said her friend Rose. “Everything was getting to be too much for her. She said her biggest disappointment was feeling that she was no longer needed.”

  I wondered if Granny was mad at me. “Mad no, sad yes,” Rose later told me. “She was just lonely. You were the child she never had. She told me that.”

  When I heard this, I knew it was time to head home.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Love Remains

  In June 2004, I was finally finished with the book I’d been ghostwriting and flew in from Palm Springs, relieved to be back again in Battery Park City rather than baking in the 110-degree temperatures of the desert.

  The summer weather here was spectacular. The Hudson River, as usual, was brimming with sailboats catching the breeze, and the Esplanade was filled with bikers, joggers, and dozens of happy dogs.

  All of it was a comforting welcome home and I was looking forward to a relaxing holiday—and to being with Pearl.

  “Hello Granny!” I exclaimed, bursting into her bedroom and giving her a big hug and some presents—including a little bamboo clock I’d found in California along with some chocolate-covered coconuts.

  “My boy is home!” she smiled wanly, struggling to sit up in bed.

  “You remember me, Oldest?”

  “Barely,” she answered.

  “No, no, she can’t have those, her stomach isn’t so good,” Naia told me under her breath as she took the candies away.

  “So, tell me all about your trip—and if you’ve got any other presents there for me,” Granny laughed.

  After we talked for a while, I made an excuse to go out into the living room.

  “She’s sick again,” whispered Naia, who looked ready to burst with stress, having been alone with Granny day after day with little time for rest.

  “It’s the diverticulitis,” she explained, the same disease that had landed Pearl in the hospital in 2001.

  “What are the symptoms?” I asked her.

  “Same as last time—the belly pain, bloating, constipation, and chills.”

  Even with Naia’s vigilant care, I could see that Pearl was far worse than the last time I’d seen her. She looked ghostly white, she’d lost more weight, and her hands were cold even with the heat turned on high in June, making the room suffocating.

  As Naia and I talked, she told me that the trend had continued, with Pearl rarely getting out of bed and sleeping the days away. She often had bad dreams or hallucinations caused by the brain tumor.

  More and more, Pearl escaped into her own little world, talking to Arthur out loud as she drifted in and out of long naps. It had been ten years now since he died, “but she was dreaming about him all the time,” her friend Rose remembered. “She knew time was running out and told me that it was almost like Arthur was calling to her, waiting for her. She was looking forward to seeing him on the other side.”

  Naia, sensitive to Pearl’s loneliness, tried her best to keep her spirits up, but it just wasn’t working. Neither was the medicine.

  More than anything, it was Pearl’s stomach that was the ongoing problem.

  “I give her prunes and raisins and cook special foods for her, pureeing them and feeding her by hand,” said Naia, “but nothing seems to help.”

  Although Pearl’s primary care physician was trying various approaches to alleviate Pearl’s problem, she wasn’t improving. And by the fall of 2004, Pearl was bleeding internally. Although she was scheduled to have a colonoscopy, she wasn’t up to doing the preparation necessary for the procedure.

  Then one afternoon in early October, just a week after her ninety-second birthday, Naia called me in a panic. “Please! It’s Granny. Come over. Now!”

  As I entered the bedroom, Pearl was in bed lying on her back, but very still. Naia was close to tears and talking rapidly. “This morning she was very weak and couldn’t talk much. Now she’s passed out. She’s breathing, but like in a coma. And her pressure is very low.”

  We called 911 and within minutes, a fireman and two ER technicians were in Pearl’s bedroom, putting an IV in her arm and an oxygen mask over her face. With Pearl on a stretcher, we took a somber elevator ride to the lobby, then into the ambulance and off to St. Vincent’s Hospital. As the siren blared away, I sat in the back holding Granny’s hand, talking to her about—who else?—Katie.

  “Granny, remember when Katie used to steal the cake right after you baked it?” She opened her eyes and gave me a little nod of her head. “Naughty girl,” she whispered.

  Late in the day, after Pearl was settled in her hospital room, her physician called me out into the hall. He knew that I had the medical power of attorney and a health care proxy that had a “do not resuscitate” order in it, as Pearl wanted no extraordinary measures taken to prolong her life, a subject we had discussed in the past.

  “The MRI shows that Pearl has a total obstruction of the bowel” he told me. “She’ll require immediate surgery to correct it—within the next twenty-four hours.”

  “And if she doesn’t have it?” I asked.

  He paused. “If she doesn’t do it, her condition is fatal. So you need to discuss this with her now.”

  “I would rather have you explain it to her.”

  “I think you should do it,” he said.

  “But you’re the doctor,” I insisted.

  In the end, as the doctor refused to speak to Pearl, I walked back into Granny’s room and lightly touched her arm, trying to wake her up. I dreaded this moment. She was very groggy, only half-conscious, though I could tell she was able to hear and understand me.

  “Granny!” I said fairly loudly. “I need to talk to you. I just spoke to your doctor, and he told me that you need an operation on your stomach… can you hear me?”

  And she shook her head yes.

  “The doctor says that—you need it now… that if you don’t do it…” I paused because I didn’t want to say the next words.

  “If you don’t do it, Granny, he said you could die. Do you understand?”

  She shook her head yes again.

  “So… Granny, do you want the operation?”

  Given the choice between extending her life or death, what would she do? I knew the answer.

  Ever so slowly, Pearl opened up her eyes and shook her head no.

  “Are you sure you don’t want it, because you can get it.”

  She shook her head again.

  “Okay,” I said, gently holding her hand. And she had a surprisingly strong grip on it. “Then, don’t worry. We won’t do it. Just rest.”

  I understood that Pearl couldn’t bear having her body disturbed by one more doctor. It reminded me of the suffering Katie had endured and how she was ready to slip away when she could.

  I sat by Pearl’s bed in a daze. My mind drifted away, back in time, rewinding our adventures of the last sixteen years. All of it came flooding back from the first day I knocked on Pearl’s door.

  There was my bowlegged puppy arriving in Battery Park City, climbing in Pearl’s lap and falling soundly asleep. Then she was outside by the Hudson River, curiously looking out at the ships as Pearl fed her a pistachio ice-cream cone. I saw Katie’s paw resting possessively on Pa-Re-El’s arm as Granny whispered confidentially into her ear. “Girlie, you look so pretty!”

  The bond between them had been unshakeable. And even two years after Katie’s passing, Pearl never stopped talking or thinking about her girl. Their love was eternal.

  I saw Pearl handing me her plum tart baked especially for Katharine Hepburn, a look of pride and excitement on her face as she wrapped it in Saran Wrap for the trip uptown. There she was sitting at the table in her Donald Duck hat, giggling with Ryan as they played Fish; wiping Ryan’s chocolate-covered mouth with a napkin; picking him up at the bus; putting on a Halloween mask as she went trick-or-treating with him; and tenderly tucking him into bed.

  I saw Oldest laughing when she tasted that disastrous cake I’d made, pointing out that I�
�d accidentally put in salt instead of sugar; hurrying into the hospital ward after my bike accident; bringing hot chicken soup into my bedroom the following day; energetically walking Katie when I couldn’t; toweling Katie dry after a walk in the rain; and holding onto my arm firmly as we made our way through the mud to Arthur’s funeral.

  And I could never forget Katie, Pearl, John, and Ryan posing together for Family Circle and Pearl later sitting at her dining table reading the “Granny Down the Hall” article, distributing it to all her friends. I felt her hand firmly on my shoulder, so proud.

  In this kaleidoscope of happy memories, I saw Pearl’s cameo appearances at parties, making her entrance (as Katie poked behind her legs) as I announced, “Heeeeeeeeeeeeere’s Granny!”

  I heard her advice, her opinions, and most of all, her laughter.

  “Thirsty,” she told me now, her lips parched.

  “She can’t drink any water,” the nurse told me, “but I’ll bring you some ice chips that you can give her.”

  She handed me shaved ice on little wooden sticks. I went over to Pearl’s bedside and held one of them in her mouth as she sucked away on it, grateful to keep her lips moist. She seemed a little more alert.

  “Let’s call Lee and you can say hello,” I told her. Granny nodded her head.

  I put the call through on my cell phone and held it up to her ear, “Pearlie, are you okay? Are you in pain?” Lee asked.

  “No, I’m okay,” Pearl whispered, almost inaudible. “How are you?”

  “I’m fine. Pearlie, are you having a hard time talking?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then just listen. Glenn will be back in the morning, and I’ll see you in the afternoon.” Lee began to cry, silently, sensing that this could be their last call.

  “I love you, Pearlie Girlie.”

  “I love you too.”

  “I’ll see you later,” she said.

  A few minutes later, I said good night to Granny and headed home from the hospital. “Okay, Granny,” I said, holding her hand. “I’m going to go now and I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”

  She looked up at me and nodded.

  And that was the last time I ever saw Pearl.

  That morning, October 18, 2004, at about 3:00 a.m., I was startled when my phone rang. I picked up the receiver, half asleep. It was a male nurse from St. Vincent’s whom I had met earlier that day. “I’m sorry to tell you that your friend Pearl passed away a few minutes ago.”

  “How?” I asked.

  “She had no pain. She just fell asleep, stopped breathing.”

  So this was it. Death is strange. One minute, the person you love is right there, holding your hand, sick but breathing and alive. Then they’re gone.

  In a way, I was relieved. Granny was free. All the suffering was over.

  She’d been lost in profound sadness since Katie’s death, sleeping the days away or endlessly watching TV, waiting for the end to come. A horrible silence had enveloped her household for months at a time, what with John and Ryan long gone and me so often away.

  And now, at the ripe age of ninety-two, Granny could rest in peace.

  I went into my dining room, where I kept all the leather-bound scrapbooks, twenty of them lined up along a built-in bookcase, each organized by theme (“Granny’s Eighty-fifth Party,” “Katie the Wonder Dog,” “Halloween,” “Valentine’s Day,” etc.). I pulled out the biggest book, a red one, filled with pictures of Granny, Katie, Ryan, John, and me.

  I took it into bed with me, and spent the rest of the night turning page after page as the story of our lives came back to life in complete detail. In two of the most poignant pictures, I saw Pearl holding Ryan’s hand, and years later, Naia holding Pearl’s hand, each supporting and protecting the other.

  How fortunate we all were to have found in Pearl a mother, grandmother, friend, confidante, and neighbor—all rolled into one. And how blessed we were to have been brought together by Katie.

  At daybreak, the first person I called with the news of Granny’s passing was Lee, who had returned to town from New Jersey with the intention of seeing Pearl at the hospital. After a very brief phone conversation, Lee came up to my apartment. When I opened the door, she stood there, crushed and incredibly sad. For just a moment, we looked at each other, and then she fell into my arms, crying, bereft that her Pearlie Girlie was gone.

  After a few minutes together, we went down to Granny’s apartment to break the news to Naia. She was inconsolable. She had spent over two years, day and night, taking care of Granny, and they had become incredibly close.

  “I felt terrible,” Naia later told me. “Pearl and I were so attached… it was overwhelming to lose her.”

  As Naia had no home of her own, I asked if she’d like to stay on for a while in Pearl’s apartment. But she shook her head no, bent over at the dining table sobbing as Lee held her in her arms. I looked around the apartment, at Granny’s wheelchair, at the medicine bottles, and at the empty twin bed that she’d left just the day before. I looked at all the little knickknacks Pearl loved, her prized collection of Broadway programs and cookbooks, and her healthy plants lovingly tended to along the windowsill. It all seemed desolate without her there.

  The next day, when Lee and I got to the funeral home, we entered the chapel to say our final good-byes. Although I dreaded seeing Granny, she looked very much at peace, lovely really. Her face was beautiful.

  Into her coffin, Lee placed the cherished honeymoon photo of a very young Pearl and Arthur out for a stroll on the boardwalk in Atlantic City. She also put in Pearl’s porcelain doll and the afghan her mother had knitted, both of which had given her such comfort. And finally, I stepped forward to put in a framed picture of Katie, the one taken at Granny’s eighty-fifth birthday party, where she sat happily in Pearl’s arms, outfitted in one of her party dresses. Now they could rest together.

  At the Westchester cemetery, there were about twenty-five people, a mix of Pearl’s relatives, friends, and neighbors, including Lee, Naia, Paul, and Rose, plus my sister Debby, who loved Pearl and came in from Albany for it. I was especially glad that John and Ryan were coincidentally in the United States on a short visit and able to be there. What a bittersweet reunion. Ryan was somber and, at age thirteen, looked so handsome and grown up. I think this was probably his first brush with death, and he was very brave about it. I know how much he loved Granny.

  John spoke poignantly of Pearl, about her strength and pragmatic spirit, her warmth and giving nature, and how she gave John and Ryan a second home when they most needed one. “She always made time for us, even when Arthur was sick—and after he died, she adopted us both.

  “Pa-Re-El became my confidante and never hesitated to express her point of view when she thought I was messing up!” he added with a laugh. He reminded us of her steady calmness, her constant willingness to help, and her funny and fun-loving nature. “We will miss her terribly,” he finished.

  Lee then spoke of Pearl, whom she described as “a woman of today—strong, independent, with a wit as sharp as a tack. And she used it until the last days of her life, keeping us in line when we needed it.”

  “Pearl,” she added, “was quick to point out our shortcomings, but always in a humorous and loving way. It was on September 11 that I found Pearl, alone and confused. There was an immediate bond forged amid the horror of the day, which grew and sustained our friendship. I was always hugging and kissing her and I know she loved it. We will miss you, Pearlie Girlie.”

  Then Rose, who had so faithfully supported Pearl in her final days, stepped forward with a poignant poem about God calling Pearl home, “though she will never be alone,” said Rose, “because part of us went with her.”

  As I stood there on that crisp sunny October morning, I felt content to let other people have their say about Granny. I had nothing I really wanted to say myself, not that day, and not in public.

  As all families do, we were now experiencing the inevitable loss that comes with illness and
death. But I was somehow numb to the sadness that day as I found myself gazing up at the trees and rolling hills of the cemetery.

  Knowing Pearl’s love of nature, I was thinking she would have taken special pleasure in the beautiful Japanese maples, oaks, and dogwoods now surrounding her.

  It would take time for me to fully understand the grand pattern of what had happened over sixteen years and what it all meant. All I knew was that I missed Oldest, my closest friend and Katie’s keeper, and that she would never be far from my mind, just as Katie never was.

  As I looked up at the sky, I imagined my dog’s spirit somewhere up there merging with her beloved Granny, both together at last, with Katie snuggled up against Pearl, the two of them blissfully content.

  EPILOGUE

  An Open Door

  During the next few months, I was leveled by the loss.

  It felt like the final blow, with Granny, Katie, and Arthur gone, while John and Ryan were back again in Paris, our reunion all too brief. Even Naia, whom I was so fond of, was leaving. Everyone had moved on… but I was still here living along the hallway that was now eerily quiet.

  Although Ryan and John would periodically keep in touch, the unique closeness we once felt could never be captured again. Partly because of the geographical distance that separated us, there was no chance of holding onto what we’d had. And the matriarch of our family and Katie were both gone—twin spirits that had kept us all united.

  After just a few months, though, I concentrated less on what I had lost, less on the past, and more on appreciating the gift that had been given to me.

  I saw that what I had experienced was the abiding love of family—in the form that I had found it—a singularly happy living situation that could not last forever—but one that lives always within its surviving members.

  So although our family, in a physical sense, could not survive the inevitability of death and changing circumstances, the memory of our unique bond could never be forgotten.