Katie Up and Down the Hall: The True Story of How One Dog Turned Five Neighbors Into a Family (24 page)

But it wasn’t okay at all. The world was collapsing around us, crushing our beautiful neighborhood, killing our residents,
and forever changing our lives—and the world.

A
few minutes later, I got up off the ground and brushed myself off. Most of the people around me had blackened faces and everybody
looked stunned, or worse. Now my only thought was of Granny.

Where
was
she? It would be futile trying to find her in this cloud of black dust, but I dreaded the thought of her being trapped in
the dark, alone and afraid.

As I would later find out, after Pearl wandered off down the walkway, she was approached by an incredibly kind, very pretty
woman named Lee—a financial planner in her fifties who lived in our building. Blond-haired with brilliant blue eyes and a
warm sisterly air, Lee had a large retinue of elderly women friends that she watched over. She recognized Pearl, but they
had never met.

“Pearl,” Lee remembers, “was standing in the middle of an open area walking around in a circle, dazed, looking up at the Towers.”

“Would you like to come sit with us?” Lee asked, hospitably pointing to a bench of her women friends.

“Sure, thanks,” answered Pearl, shivering in the breeze
despite the warmth of the day. She was grateful that one of the women offered her a black cardigan.

Soon, with hundreds of people running south on the Esplanade, the police instructed the women around Pearl and Lee to likewise
begin moving the quarter-mile distance toward the southern tip of the Battery where police boats were waiting. But, exhausted
and frightened, Pearl had no desire to go anywhere, as she was searching furiously for me and Katie.

“Please,” she told Lee. “Just leave me here and go ahead. I can’t go. I’m waiting for someone.”

But Lee gently persuaded Pearl to get up and start walking, “slowly, very slowly,” said Lee, “because I could see that Pearl
wasn’t very strong.”

When the first Tower fell, Pearl cried out, gripping Lee’s arm in panic, choking on the dust. “Just close your eyes and breathe
through this,” said Lee calmly, putting a stray jacket she’d found over Pearl’s head. She then led Pearl half-blindly to the
railing by the water to steady her.

“Down, down, down!” shouted the police, ordering everyone to lie next to a stone wall flat on their stomachs with their hands
over their heads. There could be another attack, another nearby building might fall, or there could be a gas explosion.

Getting down on the ground was impossible for Pearl and she refused to do it. But she hadn’t counted on the persistent Lee,
who enlisted the help of a young man. He gladly lifted Pearl in his arms and gently placed her down next to Lee.

So there they were, these brand-new friends, huddled on the cement together. “Her frail little hands were ice-cold the entire
time,” recalled Lee, “and she never loosened her grip on her house keys, clenching them in her right hand while she held my
hand with her left. I kept talking to keep her busy.”

And then the second Tower collapsed. “It felt like an
earthquake and I just hugged Pearl close, keeping my arms around her. To keep her distracted, I asked, ‘Pearl, what’s your
middle name?’”

And that’s when Granny’s inimitable wit returned. “I don’t have one. I guess we were too poor to get one!” And Pearl broke
into a laugh. For months after that, Lee and Pearl would always joke about this moment.

A few minutes later, Lee and Pearl were up again, walking slowly through the mayhem toward the South Cove marina, where police
boats were waiting. Although it was ordinarily a short five-minute walk away, the distance seemed much greater to Granny,
who had no inclination to continue.

“Pearl kept telling me to leave her,” said Lee, “that she was an old woman and was going to die anyway, but I just ignored
that and got some water, splashing it in her face.”

Lee noticed an injured fireman being loaded onto a police boat headed toward Jersey City, and overheard someone saying that
there was room for just a few more civilians. The motorboat was already packed to its capacity with twenty-five passengers.
“Listen,” she told the captain, “there’s an eighty-nine-year-old woman with me, and if you don’t get her on this boat, she’s
not going to make it.”

“Okay, get her, and we’ll take her.”

Lee had two young men nearby hoist Pearl onto the boat, literally lifting her off the ground in an instant.

“Leave me alone!” Pearl hollered, nearly hysterical. “I’m not going.” But Lee persisted, and watched Pearl being lifted up
over the rail.

“Pearl,” Lee shouted, “I’ll get the next boat and find you over there,” but Pearl continued screaming, refusing to be separated
from her new friend.

“Take me off!” she commanded, her former strength
suddenly in evidence. “If she’s not coming, neither am I! I can’t make it without her.
Take me off
!”

Even the police were impressed with this gutsy woman who wasn’t going anywhere, terrorists or no terrorists.

The boat waited, everybody made a little extra room, and Lee was ushered aboard. And this group of strangers, huddled together,
sped off toward the safety of the Jersey shore, the bumpy water jostling Pearl around as Lee held onto her with both hands.

“Lee,” Pearl whispered, completely out of breath, “I need to find my friend Glenn.”

Meanwhile, I resisted the prospect of evacuating Battery Park City until the last possible moment, holding out hope that we
might somehow be able to return home.

Katie and I sat on the grass in front of the Museum of Jewish Heritage, a starkly modern glass-and-granite structure located
about a half mile from our building. From this perch, I watched the stream of people boarding the boats and moving away toward
the opposite shore, scouting for Pearl but never seeing her.

As I sat there, I stroked Katie’s stomach absently.

“You’ve
got
to get on one of those boats,” a policeman ordered, not for the first time.

I finally surrendered and moved forward toward the river’s edge, approaching the police speedboat that was bobbing unsteadily
in the water. I handed Katie over to a passenger already on board, and then jumped on myself. Katie’s ears were flying in
the wind and her face was smudged and blackened. I held her in my arms as we pulled away, leaving the ravaged Manhattan skyline
behind.

When we got to the Jersey side of the Hudson River, I searched, yet again, for Pearl, asking everyone I recognized from
our building if they had seen her. But nobody had. Katie was desperately thirsty and a Red Cross volunteer gave me a styrofoam
cup filled with water. She greedily gulped it down.

Determined to find a hotel, I began walking west toward the Doubletree Suites, which was about a mile away. Katie was limping
badly, but we had to forge ahead. Although I was hoping to get a room for the night, that was impossible. Hundreds of displaced
residents were already camped out in the hotel lobby when we got there.

With nowhere to sleep that night and no clothes (much less any dog food or supplies), I called my close friend and longtime
editor, Ed, naively hoping he might be able to drive into Jersey and pick us up. Of course, with all the Manhattan tunnels
and bridges closed down, this rescue plan was impossible.

“But I have some very close friends who live close by,” Ed told me. “Let me call them and see if they’ll put you and Katie
up for the night.”

And within minutes, Ed called me back with the good news. So Katie and I were on the move again, walking a half a mile to
a safe retreat.

If there’s any redeeming value in disaster, it’s seeing what happens when people bond together—offering help, sharing resources,
and making new friends. I was touched when Ed’s friends, Barbara and Charlie (he had narrowly escaped himself a few hours
earlier that day from the North Tower), greeted us at their door with open arms. Their two Labs, Spice and Dune, lumbering
on their heels, were curious about me and the new blond-haired intruder.

Katie was exhausted and disoriented. She took a quick sniff at the huge dogs and then walked right past them, her nose drawing
her toward the kitchen, where she stole food from their bowls.

“Katie!” I scolded, “that’s bad manners.” But all was well. Spice and Dune were more interested in snooping at Katie’s posterior
than protecting their food. And although these two large dogs dwarfed her, she was, as usual, unfazed. Soon, she was lying
in a heap on the wooden floor, sound asleep. I slipped out to a nearby store to buy a toothbrush and some other necessities.

That night, as I huddled with my new friends around the TV watching endless replays of the horrendous news of the day, I felt
grateful to be alive, thankful to have a place to sleep.

Twelve hours earlier, all had been well in Battery Park City. It had started out as a beautiful summer day. And now, the sun
was setting on a neighborhood that would never be the same, the comfort of home gone.

Just before going to sleep, I called John on my cell phone.

“I lost Granny,” I told him worriedly, explaining how she had disappeared, “and I don’t know what to do.”

“We’ll figure it out,” he told me with certainty, steady as always.

“Just take the ferry back to Manhattan tomorrow, and Ryan and I will pick you up. You and Katie can stay with us. It will
be just like old days—we’ll be together again!”

For the first time that entire, dreadful day, I was crying. I guess it was John’s familiar voice and that down-to-earth logic
that got to me.

That night, as I fell into a sound sleep with Katie pressed up against me, I felt so much better, knowing that I was going
home again.

The next day, John and Ryan were waiting at the dock on the Manhattan side of the Hudson as Katie and I got off the ferry
boat at Pier 79 near West 39th Street.

“Katie girl!” Ryan shouted, bending down, “COME!”
Katie gleefully bounded into his arms, covering his face with wet kisses.

“Whoa, whoa, girl,” he giggled. He took her red leash out of my hand and led her into a taxi, with John and me following.

We headed up to John’s new seven-room apartment on West 57th Street, a sprawling well-decorated home far more glamorous than
his previous place in our building.

The question on all of our minds was: Where was
Granny
? It was all I could think about. Although Pearl had often talked about her New Jersey relatives, I was drawing a complete
blank on their names and had never had their phone number. For the next three days, John and I were stumped. But at last,
it was John who pulled from his memory the name. “I did a computer search for Pearl’s nephew. It’s a very common last name,
but I started calling around, and I’ve found him!”

I practically grabbed that number out of his hand and immediately called. “Granny! Is that
you
?!”

“It’s Granny all right—thank God it’s
you
,” sighed Pearl, who sounded exhausted. She explained that Lee and others from our neighborhood had stayed with her for hours
that day until they finally parted that evening. Lee went home with her daughter and left Pearl in the very capable hands
of a married couple who lived in our building. They had kindly taken Pearl that first night to stay with
their
relatives in New Jersey. The following night Pearl was driven by them to her own relative’s house in nearby Montclair, though
she wasn’t very happy about it.

“I tried to find you, Glenn… but everything went wrong,” she said sadly, her voice trailing off. “Are you okay? What happened
to you? How’s my girl?” I filled Pearl in on everything and told her how sorry I was that I had lost her.

“And Katie misses you! We’re temporarily living with John
and Peter, but I’ll call you every day and we’ll figure out what to do next.”

It became quickly clear that it was going to be impossible to return home anytime soon. There was no electricity, gas, water,
or telephone service. Moreover, Battery Park City was now an armed camp, surrounded by the National Guard, the FBI, FEMA’s
(Federal Emergency Management Agency) Urban Search and Rescue, and the New York City Police Department—the entire neighborhood
declared a crime scene.