Katie Up and Down the Hall: The True Story of How One Dog Turned Five Neighbors Into a Family (13 page)

I marveled at Pearl’s sheer energy. Nearly eighty, she was sturdily built and rarely sick, and did all her own shopping, cooking,
and cleaning, while also taking superb care of Arthur (and, of course, Katie).

“I got my little girlie some dog vitamins today,” she told Katie one day, popping a chewable pill into my dog’s mouth before
she could resist, then following it with a Milk-Bone chaser. “Now go over by the window and get some sun,” she ordered. And
off Katie went, stretching out on her back for a snooze.

Pearl also took excellent care of me—treating me as the grandson she never had. Like my own grandmother had, she kindly picked
up my favorite rye bread with black seeds, spoiled me with Nova Scotia salmon and cream cheese, and did neighborly things
like getting the mail or taking packages in when I was out of town.

And although she wasn’t very physically demonstrative, I could sense her love and affection just by the way she looked at
me or touched my shoulder or arm.

She was a great date and we sometimes went to movies
together (leaving Arthur at home reading, as he preferred it), to Broadway shows, out for dinner or shopping, or on long walks
along the Esplanade with Katie.

Pa-Re-El and I now shared a unique closeness. But “the child’s” daily antics, needs, and moods remained the centrifugal force
that bonded us.

In 1992, Katie turned four, celebrating it with a carrot cake. The cream cheese frosting covered her mouth as she munched
happily away on it, pulling each piece off a fork held by Pearl.

By this point, I noticed an almost mystical bond between Katie and Pearl, notwithstanding Katie’s close relationship to Arthur
as well.

My dog simply worshipped Pearl. She lay on her kitchen floor when she cooked, napped on the living room couch when she cleaned,
and lounged on her bed as they both watched TV—typically the Food Channel.

One day when Pearl was watching the
Oprah Winfrey Show,
Katie irritated her by pressing her paw down on the remote control (something she saw Pearl do all the time) and accidentally
changing channels.

“No!” snapped Pearl, taking the remote away from Katie and switching it back to ABC.

But Katie persisted, grabbing it back again, and slapping down her paw on the buttons. It seemed that she understood the connection
between her action and the changing of pictures and sounds. And I could tell by her mesmerized expression that she was enjoying
the mischievous game.

“No!” Pearl repeated, hiding the remote under her pillow and leaning against it as Katie attempted to flush it out again.

“She’s Queen Katie,” Pearl told me later that day, “but smart as a whip.”

She was also, of course, hungry all the time. Katie especially irritated Pearl when she used the remote control as a dog bone,
biting into it with gusto. “That girl knows what she wants and she’s spoiled rotten.” I knew that well, as I was the one who
had spoiled her.

Whatever that dog wanted, she got.

Sometimes when Pearl was on the phone, Katie would sit up on the bed rather regally and slap Pearl on the arm with her paw,
“telling” her to get off the line and pay some attention to her.

“
Come on, Pa-Re-El
,” she seemed to say, “
Let’s play!
”

At other times, she’d seduce Pearl into a nap by stretching out on her back, placing her head on Pearl’s pillow, and pulling
Pearl over in her direction.

More than once, I’d find them snoozing blissfully together, the Food Channel lulling them both to sleep. On nights like those,
I didn’t dare wake them, so Katie got a sleepover, while Arthur got a surprise.

T
he year 1992 was a wonderful one for me.

On May 15, as I blew the candles out on my birthday cake at an outdoor fortieth birthday party set up overlooking the Hudson
River, everything in my world seemed just about perfect.

The weather that night was sublime, warm and breezy, with sailboats drifting by as we picnicked on the shore.

Katie was in great spirits, spunkier than ever, trotting around the guests outfitted with a pink birthday hat that was perched
crookedly on her head.

Pearl and Arthur had their “girl” on a red leash as they talked animatedly with my family, friends, and colleagues from work.

And to top it all off, I had completed a new book that would be published in the fall. It was titled
Turning Point: Pivotal Moments in the Lives of America’s Celebrities
, a compilation of 120 interviews featuring celebrities who had talked to me about how they’d overcome crises in their lives,
based upon the column I was writing in the
New York Daily News
.

Here were conversations with everyone from Mary Tyler
Moore, Carol Burnett, Dolly Parton, and Paul Newman to Calvin Klein, Malcolm Forbes, Walter Cronkite, and Joan Kennedy.

I dedicated the book to you-know-who. Her picture graced the title page with this inscription: “To my baby, Katie, the sweetest
turning point I’ve known—a daily reminder of innocence, loyalty, and love.”

Pearl and Arthur were my full-time “grandparents,” proud, doting, and excited about the book and also eager to read my magazine
stories. The lineup that year would include Elizabeth Taylor (“Behind the Mask: AIDS & the Celebrity Crusade”), Marla Maples
(“The Marla ‘Follies’”), Kathie Lee Gifford (“Believe It!”), Michael Jackson (“Soul Survivor”), Al Pacino (“Happy at Last?”),
and Cher (“Total Cher”).

Each time I got an advance copy of one of these stories, I took it right home for a ritual “show and tell,” which always took
place around Pearl’s trusty dining table.

One day, I remember Arthur opening up the pages to an interview with Sylvester Stallone, while Katie pushed around him, poking
her nose into the magazine pages and scratching them with her paws, vying for attention.

“Calm down, girlie, and eat your bone,” he ordered, gently pushing her away as he became engrossed in the story.

Beyond being my most avid reader, Arthur was a trusted friend and advised me on anything and everything—house repairs, choice
of suits, financial investments, medical care for Katie, and strategies for handling my boss. I found the soothing sound of
his raspy baritone voice calming, and he always put things into perspective for me as nobody else could.

And Pearl was no less helpful, handing out advice and recipes, conveying the latest health tip she’d heard on the radio,
reminding me about neighborhood events, and giving me the thumbs-up or thumbs-down on a prospective date or friend.

We were a family.

I couldn’t have loved my own grandparents any more than I did Pearl and Arthur. We seemed to fulfill within one another a
deep need for connection—and it didn’t hurt that we were so accessible to one another, separated by just forty-five feet.

By fall of that year, I was promoting
Turning Point
, first on the
Oprah Winfrey Show
, which devoted an entire show to the book, featuring four of my interview subjects, each one of them talking about challenging
moments in their lives. There was Marla Maples (on Donald Trump), Rod Steiger (on depression), Angie Dickinson (on her sister’s
diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease), and Annette Funicello (on her battling multiple sclerosis).

Oprah, as always, was astutely sensitive as she navigated through people’s darkest moments, finding the uplifting lesson in
each of them.

And then, the lightest, most entertaining moment of the show came when Oprah asked me about Leona Helmsley’s “turning point,”—going
off to jail.

“What did she tell you?” Oprah asked curiously.

I offered just one sentence—“LET ME OUT!”—which brought us to the commercial break with good-natured, uproarious laughter.

After this broadcast, both Sally Jessy Raphael and Geraldo Rivera followed with shows of their own on the book, though the
most lighthearted approach to the turning point theme was on Joan Rivers’s show, as few could equal her dry wit and appetite
for mischief.

Joan had been my first celebrity interview back in 1983,
and over the years, I’d interviewed her many times, most emotionally after her husband, Edgar, had committed suicide.

I was always struck that such a brilliantly funny woman was, off-stage, so serious and thoughtful, though onstage that day
we reveled in some mildly risqué celebrity hounding.

The most entertaining part of the interview was when she asked about Joan Collins’s past marriages and predilection for younger
men. I told her, “Joan says the sex is better with younger men… much better… and no back pain!” The audience started laughing
while the faux taken-aback expression on Joan’s face made the moment even funnier.

The book tour ended on a high note with a mid-December appearance on
Larry King
. The studio was freezing, as I remember, but Larry struck me as incredibly warm and down to earth, welcoming a noncelebrity
like me as if I were one.

For the book, Larry had discussed his recovery from a 1987 heart attack, “If you want to know the moment, the turning point,
it was opening my eyes after the surgery. ‘Mr. King, you did terrific!’ is what the nurse said. From that moment on, my life
changed. After that,” he told me, “I threw my cigarettes in the Potomac,” along with the Oreo cookies and pizza, determined
to change his habits. “Now I’m on the treadmill every day and went from 190 pounds to 160.”

“Happy at last?” I asked him.

“I’m a nine on the scale—still that little Jewish kid from Brooklyn wanting approval from the outside. There’s no ten. Maybe
next year.”

As for me, on a scale of one to ten, I certainly felt as if 1992 had been a ten. After the show that night, sitting in a Washington,
DC, hotel suite, I counted my blessings.

And a week later, on New Year’s Eve, Arthur, Pearl and I
ushered in the New Year with champagne. Katie wore a New Year’s hat and had a few sips before snoozing her way into 1993—just
slightly tipsy.

Then everything crashed—and it happened so fast.

One minute I was answering questions from Larry King’s viewers about how people overcome crises; and the next, I was having
a crisis of my own.

Just two weeks after Larry’s show, in January 1993, my professional world as I knew it imploded—everything I had built up
was quickly taken away.

The newspaper where I worked, the financially beleaguered
Daily News
, had been sold by the Tribune Company to the new owner, Mort Zuckerman, and 180 employees were fired—including me. I suddenly
had no job and no income. Gone were the syndicated column, the Sunday magazine cover stories, the TV shows, the access to
celebrities—and along with them, my position in the world.

Now I was on the unemployment line. God does have an excellent sense of humor. Looking back, I can now see that my ego had
become supersized—inflated with all those stars who made me feel more important than I was. Clearly, I was not indispensable.
And although I tried to get another job, the market was flooded with deposed
Daily News
troops, and it just wasn’t happening.

By the late winter of 1993, I was truly demoralized. I had gone from hero to zero in a matter of weeks. And despite my past
productivity, I felt like a complete failure.

Superdisciplined, I was used to being out of my apartment by 7:30 a.m. and gone until 9:00 p.m. But now I was home all day,
disoriented by this turnaround. It’s easy to feel satisfied when things are going your way, but feeling good under adverse
circumstances takes a lot more strength than I had. That’s when you really need your friends, family—and your dog.

Although I was off-kilter, Katie insisted on keeping to her routine—racing down the hallway right after breakfast to Pearl’s
just as before, though I did manage to snatch her back in the afternoons, going out for long walks with her and giving her
more of my attention than she was accustomed to.

As for Pearl and Arthur, they were, as always, nonjudgmental and encouraging. “Something will turn around for you,” said Arthur.
Most therapeutic were our dinners together when we talked about Katie and the neighborhood rather than focusing on “the problem.”