Katie Up and Down the Hall: The True Story of How One Dog Turned Five Neighbors Into a Family (17 page)

It was touching to see Ryan throw his arms around Pearl’s neck, shyly giving her a kiss. “He’s a great hugger—he’s my boy,”
she’d beam.

Watching John’s face at such moments, I could see the pleasure it gave him to expand his boy’s world, and how gratified and
supported he felt by Pearl’s presence in his son’s life.

Pearl was also making a difference in John’s life. She had not only become a de facto grandmother to Ryan, but also an unofficial
mom to John, giving him advice about everything from health and cooking to dating and child care.

“Pa-Re-El was telling me just today what to do about one of my bosses at work—that he should shove it!” John laughed, grateful
for her unconditional support and grandmotherly pluck.

All in all, things could not have been better for all of us, except that Arthur was slowing down more and more. Although he
was just as mentally acute as ever—a voracious reader of espionage thrillers and a devoted sports fan who could cite any score—his
physical energy was flagging.

When I had first met him six years earlier, he was in and
out of the apartment throughout the day, taking long walks with Katie, chatting in the lobby with neighbors, and dropping
into shops along our street.

But now, Arthur was mostly housebound, rarely leaving the house except for doctors’ appointments, since he had difficulty
walking due to arthritis and swelling in his feet.

Pearl had always been Arthur’s caretaker, but now, more than ever, she watched over him, administered his medications, and
took him to all his medical appointments. Other than visiting doctors, their outings became fewer and fewer.

More than ever, Pearl’s dining table became our main meeting place, the center of our world. For Arthur especially, mealtime
gave the day structure—and he looked forward to it immensely.

Pearl would go out to the farmers’ market to scout for fresh vegetables and fruits, and by dinnertime the apartment was filled
with mouthwatering aromas. By then, both Katie and Arthur were raring to go, emerging from their long afternoon naps in the
bedroom with happy expectation.

While Arthur walked slowly, grumbling about his “charley horse” and pain in his feet, Katie ran ahead, jumping up on the green
dining chair right next to his chair, her paws resting on the table as usual. Arthur then settled in, surveying the pot roast
or paprika chicken.

And as the meal progressed, Katie kept an eagle eye on the proceedings. First she’d polish off her own dinner of dog food,
eating it from the bowl set on the table. Then she’d beg Arthur for bits of chicken and corn, whimpering as she whacked his
arm with her paw.

“Steady now, hold it girlie, stay!” he’d tease her, just as Ryan often did, lifting up a tasty morsel above Katie until he
was ready to pop it into her mouth.

“Don’t torture her,” I’d say as Pearl looked on, satisfied that everybody appreciated her culinary effort.

As we all sat together, joined by Ryan and John, there was something poignant about watching Pearl and Arthur conversing about
current events, neighborhood gossip, and Katie’s antics, still engaged in lively dialogues after more than fifty years of
marriage.

“Pearl, dear,” Arthur would say, gesturing for her to pass the potatoes, “tell everyone about that honeymoon meal we had in
Atlantic City,” to which Pearl would vividly recount the greatest clam chowder and stuffed flounder she’d ever tasted. “Atlantic
City wasn’t all glitzed up back then,” Arthur chimed in, pointing to the couple’s favorite photo perched up on their mahogany
liquor cabinet—the black-and-white shot of them on the boardwalk.

As they chatted, I had plenty of time to observe the little things that told the entire story of the love they shared. Pearl
would get up after dinner and stand behind his chair, putting both of her hands firmly on each of his shoulders, and massaging
them. He’d lean back and close his eyes, comforted by her touch. Other times, he’d lightly touch her arm and stroke it, compliment
her on dinner, and politely ask for dessert in the living room. Later on, they’d watch basketball and baseball together on
the TV, cheering for the New York Knicks or Yankees.

Pearl was genuinely interested in what Arthur had to say—even when he repeated himself. Over dinner, he’d often launch into
one of his old (and corny) jokes for the umpteenth time, his energetic (and dry) delivery making it new again. One of his
favorites was his “matchmaker” story, which he’d cart out for anyone new who came to dinner.

“A marriage broker offered Morty a beautiful young girl, a real prize, to be his wife,” began Arthur. “But Morty was
stubborn. ‘I’m a businessman,’ Morty argued. ‘Before I buy material from a mill, I look at swatches. So before I get married,
I gotta have a sample also.’

“The broker had no choice but to relay the message to the girl. ‘He says he has to know exactly what he’s buying and insists
on a sample.’

“‘Listen,’ the girl replied, ‘I’m also good at business. A sample I don’t give. But, I
will
give him references!’” Arthur would then erupt in uproarious laughter and Pearl would join in heartily.

And on it went, with Arthur’s high spirits carrying us all along.

But then, a shadow was cast over our world in the fall of 1994, when Arthur was hospitalized with pneumonia. Weeks before,
he’d been coughing, unable to shake off a bad cold. Increasingly depressed, he seemed more detached than usual, even spending
less and less time with Katie, who sat on top of him every chance she got.

Pearl was very upset and went to the hospital every morning, as soon as visiting hours began. And I often went with her, wanting
to see Arthur and give her the support she needed. She was so stressed out. All of her life, Pearl had been Arthur’s only
caretaker, as much his mother as his wife, and she’d done an excellent job of it. But now, Arthur’s condition was out of her
control.

On one of our visits, Arthur was disoriented, tortured by the intravenous tubes running in and out of him, including a feeding
tube down his throat.

“Please,” he whispered in a raspy voice, firmly gripping my wrist, “cut the tubes with a penknife!” I knew he wasn’t thinking
correctly, and it broke my heart to see him this way. He was in so much pain and wanted out of it. “Please, do it!” he begged.

Afterward, Pearl and I were both shaken and walked across the street from New York Hospital to a little Chinese restaurant
and shared lunch as we frequently did. We talked quietly about Arthur’s worsening condition and I saw something in Pearl’s
eyes that I’d never seen before—fear.

At nights, Arthur’s chair was empty at our “family dinners.” We missed the deep sound of his voice and his commonsense remarks,
even his complaints about the cartoons. Every night, Ryan asked about “Artur’s” condition. Katie obviously missed him too,
as she napped alone on his lounge chair, looking forlorn.

Then, one freezing day in early January 1995, Pearl went to the hospital alone to see Arthur. Late that afternoon, she knocked
on my door. When I opened it, she was so pale.

For the first time ever, this strong, proud woman—the stoic, always upbeat matriarch of our family—was crushed, tears filling
her eyes as we embraced.

I knew.

“Oh, no… I’m so sorry.”

“They tried to save him, more than once,” she whispered, “but it was too late. And….” She choked on her words as I led her
over to my couch.

Pearl and Arthur had been married for
fifty-nine
years, and now Arthur was gone, at age eighty-five.

“We almost made it to sixty,” Pearl smiled. She sat down on the couch and gazed out of the window while absently holding Katie
close.

We were all bereft. Ryan was too young to fully understand what had happened, though he cried when John explained that Arthur
was in heaven and was never coming back. “Never?!” he asked.

For weeks afterward, Katie moped around Pearl’s
apartment, aware of Arthur’s absence and mournfully lying on his favorite chair, almost as if guarding it for him as she slept
on his bathrobe, which held his scent. Without him, there was a deafening silence in apartment 3C.

The next day, we all accompanied Pearl to the cemetery up in Westchester County in the most atrocious weather imaginable.
It was stormy and depressing with teeming rain, high winds, and mud slides. Pearl almost lost her footing as we made our way
down a hill to the family plot. I held onto her left arm while Ryan tightly gripped her right hand, and John held a giant
umbrella over all of us. Katie sank into the wet ground, the mud covering most of her paws, but she soldiered on and sat at
attention as Arthur’s coffin was lowered.

Amid all of us humans, there was Arthur’s canine companion, her face soaked with the rain, wanting to be part of her “pack,”
through thick and thin.

When we got back home, Pearl was exhausted.

“That,” she told me over a cup of steaming tea, “was the worst day of my life.” Saying good-bye to Arthur was the only time
I ever saw Pearl cry.

O
n a warm spring afternoon in 1996, a familiar yellow school bus, filled with talkative six- to nine-year-olds, pulled up to
our complex, its red lights blinking as it stopped in front of the local ice-cream and bagel shop.

Together with many of the waiting moms and dads, Pearl was there too, right on time for her 3:00 p.m. pickup—the highlight
of her day.

She was dressed in sensible black lace-up shoes, a gray tweed skirt, and a blue windbreaker, her thick mane of hair blowing
in the breeze.

Katie was also eagerly waiting at the stop, sitting at attention as the door of the bus opened. She scrutinized each of the
kids coming down the steps, searching nervously for six-year-old Ryan.

And then there he was—giggling wildly with a friend as he jumped off the bus, outfitted in a denim jacket, blue jeans, and
red sneakers, a blue Power Rangers backpack falling off his shoulders.

Katie dashed forward and nearly knocked Ryan over, jumping up on her hind legs to greet him.

“Hi, Katie girl,” he smiled, bending down to affectionately stroke her head, then running into Pearl’s arms. She enveloped
him in a huge hug.

“Graaaaanny!” he boomed, “this is for
you
.” He handed Pearl a little ceramic dish he’d made that day in arts and crafts.

“Thank you, sweetheart. How was your day?” she asked, getting back a quick “fine” before the boy skipped ahead, with Katie
trailing after him. The two raced home together.

Somewhere along the line, Pearl’s nickname Pa-Re-El had morphed into Granny, stretched out as
Graaaaanny
, the longer the better. If we wanted to tease Pearl, we called her
Oldest Granny,
which drew a smile, or just
Oldest
, which elicited a mock frown.

And Pearl wasn’t the only member of our group who got a stretched-out nickname. By this point in time, Katie’s moniker, “the
child,” was now pronounced “
chaaa-aellll-d
,” which Ryan repeated in a singsong over and over again with glee.

“Hello, chaaa-aellll-d!” he giggled, rubbing her head. “You good or bad?”

That all depended.

For example, when Pearl used Katie’s nickname, it was usually to underline a point. Upon returning home, I’d typically ask
her, “So, how was my sweet little chaaa-aellll-d today?” to which she’d enumerate her various infractions—stealing food (scarfing
down Pearl’s pound cake, one of her favorites), having accidents, pulling apart a sock, you name it.

“Your sweet little child isn’t so sweet today,” opined Granny, shuffling Katie to the door with her feet and laughing, always
forgiving of her canine charge.

Likewise, even with the mayhem that Ryan sometimes created, which included overflowing her bathtub or splattering finger paint
on her floor, Oldest seemed happier than I’d ever seen her, though she never said it out loud.

In the year and a half since Arthur had died, I’d seen a gradual change in Pearl. At first, she was disoriented and profoundly
sad, as anyone with such a devastating loss would be, and she mostly stayed at home, sorting through Arthur’s clothing and
giving most of it away to the Salvation Army.

But after a few months, she seemed to rebound quickly from her loss and didn’t often talk about it. Instead, she began taking
advantage of her new freedom. She spent more time with women friends in the building—shopping with them, talking on the phone,
and attending neighbor-to-neighbor teas.

Every morning, she and I had breakfast together, where we mostly talked about Katie, while in the afternoons, Pearl would
roam Battery Park on long walks with her “girl.” I also drew Pearl into my activities more than ever, inviting her to movies,
plays, dinners, and parties.

But more than anything, it was Ryan who was the key to Pearl’s recovery from losing Arthur. His adorable presence was like
a powerful elixir to Pearl. It energized her and gave her new purpose, providing grand distractions and deep affection. Her
world now revolved around
him
—though she would deny it.

“He’s a brat!” she’d protest good-naturedly, ordering Ryan out of the house and into the hall for soccer practice after one
of his high kicks nearly smashed her favorite white china pitcher. He bragged that he had control of the ball. “And I’ve got
control of you!” she countered.

With pride, she’d tell her friends that “the kid” was undeniably athletic and the cutest little boy imaginable (which he really
was, with those dimples and unruly cowlick).

And so, with John at work each day, Oldest had taken on her babysitting role with relish, picking Ryan up every afternoon
and taking him to her home for cookies, milk, and more.

She
was
Ryan’s grandmother. She truly was. And it made me happy to see how much Pearl was reinvigorated by the closeness to Ryan
and her new responsibility. She focused on her young charge with total devotion.