Katie Up and Down the Hall: The True Story of How One Dog Turned Five Neighbors Into a Family (19 page)

In fact, I was, at times, so down that I went back to sleep after taking Katie out for her first walk of the day. On Tuesdays,
when Ramon arrived, he’d let himself in and walk into the bedroom, sitting down on the bed.

“Good morning!” he’d say, knowing how badly I felt. And as Katie jumped in his lap to say hi, he’d gently pat my leg, his
voice soothing.

“I tried to cheer you up,” he later told me. “But it was terrible. You’d stay in bed and say, ‘just clean around me,’ and
that’s what I did.”

Granny, who adored Ramon, would often stop in for a visit.

“You’re going to be just fine,” she opined, bringing in matzo ball soup on a tray and sitting on the bed as we chatted.

“This is good for colds, not backs,” I joked.

“Honey,” she laughed, “this is good for
everything
. Eat it before Katie does.”

Indeed, Queen Katie would be sprawled casually on top of me, regal on the green bedspread, eyeing that soup like a hawk. She
was, of course, oblivious to anything out of the ordinary in terms of my mobility.

Truth be told, my dog
liked
me in bed—the more time in there the better. She would slap my arm with her paw when she was hungry. When she wanted to be
combed out, she’d retrieve the brush from a straw basket I kept on the floor. It was as if she was saying, “
Dad, c’mon, I need my ears done.
” She liked them untangled and fluffy.

“Your girl looked like a drowned rat on the Esplanade,” Pearl pronounced one day when she and Katie came in from walking in
heavy rain. “Dry her off,” she ordered, throwing me a bath towel.

“
Yeah, Dad, get moving
,” the “child” motioned, pushing her
wet head into my stomach. Then, Granny would pull out the hair dryer and Katie would patiently stand on the bed until she
was perfectly dry.

Some days after school, Ryan would burst into my bedroom to see Katie and me. He would throw himself on the bed, give us a
hug, and show me what he’d been up to that day in school.

“Beat it, off, off,” exclaimed Ryan, as Katie tangled herself in the covers, snooping into his backpack for leftover snacks.

Having Katie and Ryan wrestling together completely distracted me from myself, which was the best medicine of all.

At nights, when John got home, Pearl would bring an entire dinner for everyone into my bedroom. “Let’s have a picnic,” she’d
suggest. “Your bed is the table, so you’d better get ready for us.”

And promptly at seven, right after Pearl watched the evening news, there we were, Katie and Ryan positioned on the bed and
John and Pearl sitting on chairs nearby, all of us digging into Granny’s chicken cutlets.

“Like the salad?” she asked, savoring the fresh vegetables that she had scooped up earlier at our nearby farmers’ market,
“for half the price of the supermarket,” she noted proudly.

“Eat your tomatoes,” she told Ryan—who slipped more than one of them into Katie’s mouth when Pearl wasn’t looking.

“I saw that,” she snapped. “No dessert until you eat them.”

“But they’re gone!” Ryan protested.

“Now they’re back!” laughed John, plunking his own tomatoes on Ryan’s plate.

And then, at dessert time, Pearl brought out a homemade pear tart, as always, giving Katie her own slice on a plate. Ryan
would carefully put a piece of the tart on the fork and hold it
up for Katie as she delicately pulled the cake off without ever biting into the fork, getting every crumb.

Katie was now a mature girl of nearly eight, no less bouncy than before but definitely bossier, and quite definite about what
she wanted and when.

For example, even when I was trapped in bed, she’d retrieve a sock and jump up on the bed and throw it at me, ready for tug-of-war.
“You hit me in the face with it!” I objected one day. She just stared at me obstinately, determined to play.

You either complied or she would rip the sock to shreds on her own.

Having built on her TV-remote skills at Granny’s, she now liked grabbing the remote control away from me as well, pushing
down on it to change channels until she hit one she liked.

In the winter, after she came in from a walk, she liked having her paws washed off with warm paper toweling, something I’d
done since she was a puppy. She’d either trot into the bathroom and sit there, waiting, or grab a roll of towels from the
bathroom and bring it to me, dropping it for me on the bed.

Talk about smart.

Katie’s antics, our family dinners, and Pearl’s caretaking made even the worst of days the best of times. And not coincidentally,
my health was slowly improving.

Thanks to physical therapy, massage, and a great chiropractor, I was back to taking long walks, swimming, and even riding
a bike.

“Hey, Glenn P!” shouted Ryan one brisk October day, outfitted in his yellow bike helmet, headed for a ride on the Esplanade.
“My Dad and I are going out… want to come?”

Yes, I did! And from that point on, whenever I could, I was back on my bike tooling along the Hudson River, with Katie on
a leash, trotting from behind. Ryan led the way, talking nonstop to “the child,” telling her to stop pulling on the leash,
though she was more interested in snooping on the ground for crumbs. It was a fun time—and a great relief to be outside again.

One morning in March 1996, Katie was, as always, snuggled up against my chest, her long ears draped across my arm. Listening
to her snore contentedly under my down comforter was such a consoling, peaceful way to begin the day.

In the midst of a happy dog dream, she’d woken me up with the swat of her tail against my stomach—her brown eyes sealed shut
by those long blond eyelashes.

Held at bay by the canine snooze was, of course, the less enviable part of being a dog owner—the walk outside. Even on such
an unseasonably warm day as this one, Katie, who no doubt heard the wind whistling outside, resisted the inevitable.

“C’mon, Blondie, let’s go,” I said, nudging her awake by giving her a kiss on the nose. She opened one eye and then closed
it again.

“
It’s too early
,” she seemed to tell me, burrowing deeper under the sheets to escape. “
I need some shut-eye
!”

I insisted. Katie marshaled her energy and we were up and out along the Hudson River within five minutes, walking briskly.

It seemed that my disability days were finally coming to an end, though I still found myself wrestling with morning depression.

On that March day, the “down” feeling was palpable, like a heavy weight pressing on me.

Despite the many blessings in my life, I sometimes still only focused on what I
didn’t
have—namely a job. I had never really recovered from the loss of that newspaper position, while
the physical problems I’d experienced had cut into my self-confidence and left me feeling defective and inadequate.

Much as I used to complain about the daily pressures of a full-time job, structure was golden for me, and I sorely missed
saying good morning to colleagues, sharing jokes, having lunch dates, racing around to interviews, and sticking to a tight
schedule.

Without all that, what was I now? What was my purpose?

“Snap out of it!” exclaimed Granny that morning at breakfast, using one of her favorite expressions, a line taken from the
Cher movie
Moonstruck,
which she loved. “You’ve got your girl, me, John, and the kid, and things could be a lot worse.”

Pearl had some of the same no-nonsense qualities as the heroine of that film: Both were pragmatic and fiery, stoic and stubborn.
No matter what she said, I found her presence put things right into perspective.

“Now pass the butter.”

By midafternoon, when I left for my weekly therapy appointment, the wind had dramatically died down, so I decided to ride
my bike the three miles uptown, setting out with just one thing purposely left behind—a bike helmet. I hated wearing it because
having my head enclosed felt claustrophobic.

The effectiveness of therapy, for me, was transitory, its benefit vanishing a few hours after I left the office. It was far
less effective than Granny. Today was no exception.

After the appointment, now heading home on the bike, I remember feeling slightly lightheaded, as I was getting over a cold.
I considered putting my bike into a taxi, but then dismissed the idea.

I knew the route home so well that I hardly paid any attention as I automatically rode south on Seventh Avenue, then west
on Christopher Street toward the Hudson River, and made the final approach from city traffic to the bike path along the deserted
river’s edge.

The pavement here was crumbling, with shards of broken glass everywhere. Pedaling quickly and then making a sharp left turn,
I had nearly escaped traffic and reached the bike path when I suddenly hit a deep crack in the cement.

Without any warning, I went flying over the handlebars, so quickly that I had no chance to break the fall with my hands. It
was like being fired out of a cannon and catapulted through the air in a flash. I saw it all in slow motion, aware of my trajectory
but helpless to stop it.

A second later, I landed on the cement with a crunch, flat on my face—my nose, lips, forehead, and sunglasses smashed into
the cracked cement and broken glass.

There was total silence. I couldn’t move, and didn’t even try to. It was as if I’d accidentally walked into a wall of glass.
In my peripheral vision, I could see my fallen bike in a heap nearby. My face felt numb and wet, and my knees were burning.
I lay still.

Then someone appeared by my side. I saw just his feet.

“Dude! You okay?”

“Yeah,” I kind of groaned, “but I can’t move,” I told him, attempting to push myself up.

“Don’t do that… just don’t move.” He called 911 and stayed with me, putting his hand gently on my arm. Flat on my face, I
never did see his face. But I felt his concern. And later, as the events of the day unfolded, I would understand that this
man’s simple act of kindness was the beginning of the end of my depression.

Within a few minutes an ambulance from St. Vincent’s Hospital appeared, siren blaring. I remember EMS workers
placing a brace over my neck—with the expectation that I might have broken it—then lifting me from the pavement and putting
me onto the stretcher.

As I was being rolled into the ambulance, I pulled from my pocket my business card and asked the man who’d helped me if he
would ride my bike home.

“I’ll take care of it, don’t you worry about it,” he told me. And off we went.

When we reached the hospital, all sense of time was suspended. Although the emergency room was bustling with doctors, nurses,
and patients, I saw the scene around me as if the sound was turned off.

As it turned out, there was a deep gash across my forehead requiring eighteen stitches and another one under my nose that
had ripped my lip apart. On top of that, my nose was broken, both knees were bleeding, there were contusions all over my face,
and my left eye was black and swollen, nearly closed.

A nurse came by offering to telephone someone who could come to the hospital to support me. I gave her the office number of
one of my all-time best friends, Michael, a brilliant twenty-nine-year-old lawyer who also happened to be blessed with a riotous
sense of humor. He could see the irony in anything, and could always make me laugh. I really needed that now. Michael was
a once-in-a-lifetime find, the kind of friend you hope for. He was close to my family; adored Katie, Granny, and Ryan; showed
up at all our parties; and even helped me with legal matters.