Katie Up and Down the Hall: The True Story of How One Dog Turned Five Neighbors Into a Family (25 page)

And just across the street from our complex, the smoldering ruins of the Trade Center site were guarded by the military and
overrun by rescue workers who had the grim task of sifting through the debris, removing victims’ remains.

In conversations with Pearl over the next day or so, she sounded weak. She said she was fighting a stomach bug, so she insisted
that we wait to visit her until she’d had a chance to recuperate.

“Do you have everything you need, Oldest?” I asked her.

“Everything but Katie. Give her a kiss.”

Over the next week, as we watched the round-the-clock TV coverage of 9/11, Katie and I settled in with John, Ryan, Peter,
and their two dogs—Virgil and Chance.

Middle-aged Virgil was the grouchy alpha dog of the house, snarly and prone to biting anyone in his territory. He instantly
disliked Katie (and the feeling was mutual), so Katie was kept gated in the bathroom for her own protection. She moped there
on the cold tile floor, barely eating her food, only content when I took her out for walks or when she slept with me at night
in the apartment’s small office.

John’s other dog, Chance, the papillon, was a yappy white ball of fur who irritated Katie, so she simply ignored him, or slapped
him away with her paw.

Aside from the stress of having too many dogs in one apartment, I was very grateful for the hospitality that John and Peter
offered Katie and me. In the dismal aftermath of 9/11, it was so comforting being together again.

We ate bagels and cereal in the morning as I talked to Ryan about his schoolwork. I strategized with John about my work and
about functioning without my computer. And through it all, I gained enormous strength in their companionship, recapturing
the closeness we’d always shared.

This was definitely not a time to be alone—and Granny was anything but happy marooned in New Jersey. She wasn’t very close
to her niece and nephew, Edith and Leonard, and felt somewhat uneasy in their home, as she later told me. But even if she
had been comfortable, having been uprooted from her own apartment and traumatized by the physical rigors of 9/11, she was
understandably depressed and anxious to be around her regular group.

“I miss the little child!” she told me yet again on the phone. “How’s she doing?”

“Misbehaving, as usual,” I laughed. “She’s not very popular here with John’s dogs—they hate her—and she’s risking her life
to steal their food.”

“That’s my girl!” laughed Pearl, who also missed her new friend, Lee, who had provided such kind and attentive care.

“Lee saved my life,” Pearl told me gratefully, anxious to see her again.

Lee and I called Pearl every day, and, at first, she seemed okay. But she really wasn’t. She seemed to resent the good intentions
of her niece, mostly because she didn’t want her independence taken away. So even though her niece got Pearl’s hair and nails
done, and bought her new clothes, which was certainly a kind thing to do, Pearl wanted none of it.

Pearl was becoming somewhat irrational and paranoid in her suburban surroundings. One day she called up telling me that she
was locked up in the house, a “hostage,” and couldn’t get out, which was not the case. All this, I believed, was a function
of being in shock—disoriented, crushingly lonely, and worried.

The solution was obvious: bring Pearl back to Manhattan, and fast. So John rented a car and, with Katie and Ryan in tow, off
we went to Montclair to rescue her.

When we pulled into the driveway, Pearl rushed into our arms and gave us all a big hug, elated to be leaving for Manhattan.
She looked good in a new shorter, curled hairdo and had obviously gotten excellent care. Katie was beside herself with excitement.
She licked Granny’s face and sat on her lap the entire way back into the city, a quick twelve-mile ride. She soon fell sound
asleep in Pearl’s arms, her paws hanging possessively over her wrists.

John and Peter didn’t have room to host all of us, and I couldn’t impose on them any longer than the two weeks I’d already
stayed. Also, since Katie was so dissatisfied with being penned up all the time in the bathroom, it was definitely time for
us to move out on our own.

Since FEMA was offering free hotel stays for all those displaced by 9/11, we searched for one that would take both people
and
dogs. The only dog-friendly hotel I could find was the Mayflower Hotel on Central Park West, right across from Central Park.

Unfortunately, they only had one room left, as the hotel was filled with many other displaced residents of Battery Park City.
As much as I didn’t want to be separated from Granny, I got her into the nearby Helmsley Hotel, around the corner from Carnegie
Hall, just a few blocks from me and close to John and Ryan.

True, she was all alone in her room, but much happier.

“I’m free!” laughed Pearl, delighted to be back in walkable Manhattan, close to Katie and the gang. Most days, I picked her
up for lunch and for dinner and we enjoyed long strolls in Central Park. Katie chased birds and squirrels as always and asserted
herself, lunging at little dogs that irritated her.

Indoors, Katie reveled in her freedom and quickly made friends with the hotel maids. She followed them around, just as she
had Ramon, hoping they might drop something to eat, which they never did. She marched through the lobby of the hotel and stopped
to flirt with all the bellmen and anyone else willing to pet her. And even though she sometimes bumped into walls due to her
cataracts, she was in good spirits, stimulated by the change of scenery while anchored to her “pack” of regulars—me, Pearl,
John, and Ryan.

On October 7, we celebrated Pearl’s eighty-ninth birthday at an Italian restaurant a few blocks from John’s apartment. Rose
was there along with Lee and other friends from Battery Park City, none of whom could yet return to our neighborhood, which
remained off-limits and uninhabitable. Through the evening, Ryan snuggled close to Oldest, his head often touching hers as
they posed happily for photos. Pearl looked radiant that night, smartly dressed in a black suit, a leopard-patterned blouse,
and pearls. Ryan was so grown-up in a button-down blue dress shirt and khakis, his long bangs falling into his face.

We sang happy birthday off-key and had a chocolate fudge cake from the Cupcake Café, decorated with a wild garden of blue,
red, and yellow sugar flowers. Granny took charge of cutting the slices, thinner than any of us would have liked. At the table,
Ryan shoveled in cake as he showed Pearl his new Nintendo gadget.

As a birthday present, he gave Pearl a small plant for her
hotel room. “Thank you, sweetheart,” she said, holding it as if it were made out of pure gold. “I love it.”

That night as we headed back to our hotels, I realized something that I would never have fully understood had we not been
displaced from our neighborhood: Home is not a place; it’s the people placed in your heart.

So that night, even though Granny and I were still exiled from our homes, we were alive, and together again.

I
n late October, having been uprooted and living in hotels since the terrorist attacks, Katie, Granny, and I finally returned
home, though our world, as we had known it, was inexorably changed.

Although I, along with many other Battery Park City residents, had been briefly allowed into our building in late September
to collect essentials (under National Guard escort), that whirlwind visit had been a total blur.

We had been allotted exactly fifteen minutes to get in and get out. “This is a crime scene,” we were told, “and if you take
any photos, you’ll be arrested.”

I just rushed into my apartment and grabbed some clothes, my checkbook, and files I needed for magazine stories, then locked
the door and got out, relieved to return to the hotel.

But before I left the neighborhood, I noticed two unmarked, refrigerated trailers parked near our building. When I asked one
of the guardsmen about them, he told me that they held human remains recovered at the disaster site.

And now, weeks later, on this crisp fall day, the trucks were
still on site, morbid reminders that the cleanup was far from finished.

This was the day I actually
saw
the neighborhood again—and a sad sight it was.

It was hard to believe that just seven weeks earlier, the 110-story Twin Towers had been gleaming in the morning sunshine—hubs
of commerce that dominated the landscape.

The skies were now vacant. What remained was a barren, flattened field filled with tons of twisted metal, powdery dust, armies
of round-the-clock cleanup crews and, hidden from the eye, body parts still beneath the earth.

As we pulled up to our complex, Katie poked her nose out of the taxi window, curiously sniffing in the strange new smells.
The streets were eerily empty. There was still a pungent smell of burning ash.

And as later reports revealed, even on the day of our arrival back home, the air was still toxic, polluted with asbestos and
cement dust. By the furious swatting of her tail, however, Katie definitely knew she was home, though nothing was the same.

An aura of continuing shock and fear was palpable. Barricades blocked all nonessential traffic; trunks of cars were searched
for bombs, while German shepherds sniffed every parcel and backpack. The community I’d known was like a war zone, and its
residents, like war refugees, looked shell-shocked, with blank or dazed expressions, not a smile in sight.

As I looked beyond our circular driveway, mounted police navigated their horses around piles of debris, keeping a watchful
eye on the temporary phone and electrical cables that were exposed aboveground. Portable toilets and hastily erected emergency
telephone booths littered the once-manicured park adjacent to the Hudson River.

Most foreboding, police boats armed with machine guns patrolled the water, while Air Force helicopters hovered in the skies.
Hearing the ominous sound of those helicopter blades, I wondered if we were returning home too soon—or if we should have returned
at all.

On the way into our building, I stopped at our local drugstore to get a few supplies. Katie, as always, swiped a candy bar
from the lower counter, which I plucked from her mouth, giving her my standard “no!” stare. Dejected, she slyly turned her
head away from me, but stood ready, as always, to make another try.

As I walked back home on the near-empty streets, with no dogs or traffic, and almost nobody to keep us company, it struck
me that our once-vibrant neighborhood—bustling with legions of babies, teenagers, young professionals, and seniors—was now
a virtual ghost town.

Of the over 1,700 apartments in our complex, a whopping
70
percent of them were vacant. Many residents who had temporarily moved in with friends or family, or into hotels, were so
shaken that they were never coming back. Some believed their children weren’t safe, that with Wall Street so nearby, another
attack was inevitable. Others suffered from posttraumatic stress and disappeared without even returning for their furniture.

But for Granny and me, Battery Park City was home, the place where our hearts would always be. And we would not be driven
from it.

We had spent such happy days here together, outside in the park, walking with Katie along the water—surveying the sailboats,
the marina, and sweeping views of the Hudson—eating ice cream on summer nights, enjoying outdoor concerts, and savoring the
magnificent sight of the Statue of Liberty.

And inside our homes, we had baked cakes and cookies
together—eggs and sugar flying from one apartment to another. We had feasted on Granny’s plum tarts and paprika chicken and
breaded zucchini. We had shared holidays and Katie’s annual birthday parties with her favorite carrot cake.

Through the rituals of celebration, we had established a true family unit that extended beyond just us to a wide network of
our neighborhood friends—all of which made it impossible to even consider breaking it apart.

A friend living in another city asked why it had taken us so many weeks to get home. I explained that when one of the doomed
planes flew into the Trade Center, one section of its wing had broken apart and been hurled, like a meteor, across the street,
cutting a deep hole into the side of our thirty-five-story apartment tower, and shattering all the windows.

And so, on our first day back, as residents trickled back into the neighborhood, our homecoming was anything but happy. Yes,
our homes were habitable, but everything was changed—and much was lost.

Tears flowed for all of us returning home that day, feeling, as we did, the ghostly presence of those now tragically gone.

As Katie and I entered the lobby of our building, I looked through the glass wall facing what had been a verdant backyard
garden. It was now ripped up and brown. Seven weeks earlier, the grass had been covered with a blanket of singed papers hurled
into midair during the implosion of the South Tower. The documents had been carried
across
the street from the burning towers, landing in our backyard. Also on the ground had been one stray shoe that had been blown
from the foot of some poor soul. I had bent down to touch that shoe and had also found, nearby in the grass, a tube of lipstick
and a banker’s business card.