Katie Up and Down the Hall: The True Story of How One Dog Turned Five Neighbors Into a Family (32 page)

Although I came home periodically between trips, I was immersed in work and often distracted, while Pearl seemed more withdrawn
than ever. I was fully aware that my absence had shrunk her world (and her support system) more and more. I was especially
grateful that Lee was taking Pearl out to lunch, out for walks, and was even kind enough to get my mail and pay my bills (and
Granny’s) while I was away.

“When I first met Pearl,” Lee reflected, “I could tell that she was not a person who had been embraced very much. There had
not been much physical warmth in her life. I began hugging and kissing her and stroking her hand. At first, she’d be very
stiff. But especially after Katie died, she started hugging back.

“Every time I’d leave her bedroom, I’d always say, ‘I love you, Pearlie Girlie,’ and she’d just look at me. But one time when
I was leaving and forgot to hug and kiss her good-bye,
she said, ‘Oh, what? No kiss?!’ It wasn’t long after that that she started telling me, ‘I love you’ back.”

That spring, I had a great birthday party at home, inviting the new friends I’d met in Australia and Palm Springs. Granny
uncharacteristically never made her usual cameo appearance for dessert. She just wasn’t in the mood, her party girl days seemingly
over.

And in the late fall of 2003, although Oldest could still walk indoors as long as Naia supported her, she started using a
wheelchair for trips outside the apartment as her balance was unsteady.

One day, when I was home from a trip, I ran into them both outside by the bank, which was the first time I had seen Pearl
out and about in the chair. I sensed that being in it publicly embarrassed her, violating her pride.

From my vantage point, seeing her disabled this way was heartbreaking. Granny looked frail and vulnerable. But there was also
something brave about her that day. Her hair was brushed back as it blew in the blustery Battery wind. Her face was made-up
(thanks to Naia), and she was nicely dressed with a jaunty orange silk scarf at her neck. Touchingly, although she seemed
dazed and more passive than usual, she was still pleased to run into neighbors she knew, asking questions and smiling, making
comments and witty remarks.

She was still Granny, just slowed down—and deeply sad.

She had lost so much in sixteen years—her husband, John and Ryan, Katie, and now, in a sense, me as well, as I was so often
out of town.

During this period, she even confided to John that she sometimes prayed to die. “She didn’t understand why God was keeping
her alive—and wanted to be with Arthur,” he recalled.

“What’s the point of being here?” she had once asked me in despair.

“Granny!” I exclaimed, trying to make light of that heartrending question, though I fully understood it. “You have us, you
know you do.”

She just looked at me that day, changing the subject. Most of the time, she kept the banter light between us, protectively
hiding her despair from me.

Sure, we spoke all the time and saw each other, but it just wasn’t the same. When I’d call Pearl from the Gold Coast of Australia
or from Palm Springs, she sounded distant and lost, and sometimes confused. Her voice was no longer booming and filled with
curiosity. It was flat, softer, and distracted.

“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.

I
n 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.