The next day, I called in Katie’s beloved groomer, Betty, who had been cutting Katie’s hair for thirteen years. Although De De’s Dogarama had gone out of business a few years earlier, I was completely devoted to Betty, and she now made house calls.
“Hey girlfriend, I see you made it through 9/11, but your hair didn’t!”
Katie ran into Betty’s arms—enthralled to see her again. It had been a long seven weeks in more ways than one, and anything we could do to reestablish a sense of normalcy was my goal.
Betty had always been such a down-to-earth gal and a true friend to Katie and to me. I relied on her for good advice about sundry things, whether it was discussing what “senior” dog food to purchase or the best cleanup sprays to counteract accidents.
I can still see Katie that day, patiently keeping her eyes shut tight as Betty briskly shampooed her dirty coat in the bathtub, the blackened water whirling down the drain. Then, Betty rinsed her with the hose attachment as Katie turned in circles, as if in a car wash, submitting to the pressure of the water. Later, during the haircutting phase of the operation, Katie, as always, had the good sense to hold up one paw at a time while Betty trimmed her nails and delicately cut the fur around her legs.
When Betty was finally done, there Katie stood, her old self once again—exquisitely clean, her blond hair so lustrous that it almost didn’t look real. Betty swatted her on the butt, the sign that she was done, and Katie, relieved, scampered out of her reach into the kitchen for a reward.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Granny in the ER
We had much to be thankful for that Thanksgiving of 2001, finally safely home again. Pearl and I spent the holiday that year with Ryan and John, sharing a festive meal at the Marriott Hotel across the street from our complex (“all you can eat for $24.95, a great price,” Pearl smiled, holding up the coupons for all to see).
That afternoon, Oldest, the matriarch of our little group, reminisced about the days her mother cooked Thanksgiving turkeys. Her secret for keeping the skin crispy was “dry brining the skin with salt!” she said.
She gave Peter her recipe for chestnut stuffing while Ryan polished off a meal big enough for two.
Life was slowly returning to normal as Pearl’s cronies made their way back to the neighborhood. My across-the-hall neighbor, Freda, was back to formally greeting Katie, who carefully avoided her legs. Pearl’s neighbor-to-neighbor girlfriends—Ruth, Bea, Sally, Sylvia, and Georgie—were back to sharing tea.
And not least important, Pearl’s new friend Lee was kindly solicitous of her. She took her to the hairdresser, out to lunch, or for a walk, and checked in on her often as they reminisced about the unforgettable day they’d first met.
Even though Granny enjoyed it all (especially fussing over Ryan when she saw him and found out all about his school and new friends), her energy level was running low.
A week after the Thanksgiving dinner, Oldest had severe abdominal cramps and complained that she was “all blocked up,” making a doctor’s visit mandatory.
Although I wanted to accompany Pearl to the appointment, she refused. “I can do it. I’m fine,” she again insisted. She trudged to the bus alone.
But two hours later, the doctor called, notifying me that Pearl had been hospitalized, taken directly from his office in an ambulance to Downtown Hospital, not far from Battery Park City. She was suffering from an intestinal blockage, the root cause being a severe case of diverticulitis. She needed immediate surgery.
“Oldest, Oldest Granny!” I exclaimed, holding her hand when I got into the ER, thinking back to the time when she had shown up for me after my bike accident. “What in the world are you doing in a place like this?”
“I’ll do anything to take a nap.”
“You look a lot better than I did when I was in the hospital.”
“That’s not saying much,” she quipped, tart as always. “Now get me out of here.”
“Not so fast, Grannsibel… here they come,” I said, standing aside for the nurse who was about to prep Pearl for surgery.
A little while later, I followed Granny’s gurney as she was rolled toward the operating room. “You’ll be fine, Oldest,” I said, holding her hand, “I’ll be right here when you get out. And I’ll bring Lee along.”
“Do that,” she said, squeezing my hand as they rolled her away.
But after the operation, Pearl was extremely weak and fighting a lung infection. Unable to breathe on her own, she was transferred into the Intensive Care Unit, put on a respirator, and kept sedated. Lee and I came by every day.
Honestly, it was heartrending to see Pearl in this condition, lying there helpless, pale, drained of strength, and in and out of consciousness for five days.
But when she was finally taken off the respirator, it didn’t take long for her to perk up again. “Where’s Lee?” she whispered, holding my hand when she first opened her eyes.
“She’s right here,” I said, ushering our cheerful friend into the room.
“Hi Pearlie Girlie,” cooed Lee. A wonderful smile lit up her face as she took Granny’s hand and bent down to give her a warm hug and kiss.
Pearl was thrilled. “How’d I get in this jam?” she cracked.
“We’ll get you right out of it,” Lee laughed, holding up a cup of water and putting the straw into Pearl’s mouth for her to sip it.
I was encouraged by how quickly Pearl’s inimitable humor resurfaced despite still being on painkillers. For example, there was a policeman stationed in the ICU, there to guard a prisoner in the cubicle next door. Pearl, who loved to flirt, kept glancing his way, batting her eyes and inviting him over to talk.
“Officer, I could use a little protection!” she giggled, discovering in conversation that he was of German ancestry. When he answered her with a few German words, Pearl responded to him in German—though she later claimed she never spoke it.
“Keep that gun handy,” she whispered conspiratorially. “I don’t trust anyone in this hospital.”
Indeed, though she was often alert and in total command of herself, at other times she was disoriented, sometimes even paranoid, a possible side effect from the anesthesia, we were told.
Once Pearl was released from the ICU and brought back up to a regular room, she was convinced, for example, that her roommate, an elderly Chinese woman, was trying to steal her money while she was sleeping.
“Granny,” I told her. “She wouldn’t do that. In fact, that woman can’t even walk!”
“Well, I don’t trust her,” Pearl answered, handing me her wallet and instructing me to take it home with me.
Another time, she seemed to be hallucinating. “Where’s Arthur?” she asked, grabbing my arm, certain he was still alive.
I believed that the quickest way to snap Pearl back to reality was to reunite her with you-know-who.
So I now did for Granny what she had once done for me—I snuck Katie into the hospital by camouflaging my dog, as always, in a big shopping bag, with a towel on top. Only her nose poked out from it.
“My girl is breaking the law!” Pearl laughed, elated to see Katie climbing out of the bag and onto her bed. Katie was all kisses and whimpered in joy before falling soundly asleep under the covers, hidden from the nurses. The two were blissfully content.
Granny spent another twelve days in the hospital. “She’s doing very well,” the doctor assured me, but I didn’t agree. Yes, her infection was gone and the operation was declared a success, but Pearl wasn’t the same as before she entered the hospital. Her speech was sometimes confused and she was extremely weak—certainly not the woman who, just a few years earlier, was walking briskly and doing all her own cleaning, shopping, and cooking.
It seemed to me that the events of 9/11 and the surgery that followed it had broken her.
It was finally time to leave the hospital—and we were all happy to be escaping it. In her undercover work as nurse’s aide, Katie had done much to boost Pearl’s spirits, snuggling in bed with her e
ach day (“the best therapy,” Pearl smiled). But it was obvious we couldn’t take Granny home without first hiring an aide, as she could no longer care for herself.
She had once told me, “When I get to a certain age, shoot me.” But we weren’t going to do that, nor did we consider the idea of an assisted-living facility or a nursing home. Pearl was going home—though she was going to need lots of help.
Considering her independent spirit, the idea of depending on somebody else was going to be a major adjustment. As always, Pearl was stoic and made the best of things, but she didn’t realize how drastically her life was going to change, literally overnight.
She now required help to do even the most basic things. She was unable to walk without assistance, and then only a few steps, so she was going to have to learn how to use a walker. Her hands shook so badly that she needed someone to cut up her food and feed it to her; and of course, she needed assistance in the bathroom too.
Katie seemed to sense Pearl’s fragile condition. She gingerly licked her hand and lay against her in her hospital bed, though careful not to lie on top of her, as she had in the past.
I realized I couldn’t function as Pearl’s full-time aide, and it would have embarrassed us both for me to try. So the hospital’s Social Services helped find a female aide to accompany us home to fill this function, at least temporarily.
Loretta was an experienced aide, a middle-aged woman who took her job seriously. On the day we left the hospital, she painstakingly helped Pearl get dressed and transferred her into the wheelchair, though Granny resisted her help from the minute she met her.
“Where’d you find this broad?” Granny whispered, a look of total disapproval on her face. “I don’t care for her and neither will Katie.”
Indeed, on the ride home, Pearl wouldn’t even talk to Loretta, while Katie also ignored her. Over the next few days, Katie walked around Pearl’s apartment with her tail down, unhappy with the intruder, while Pearl barricaded herself in her bedroom, never speaking to Loretta unless she absolutely had to.
“C’mon Granny, she’s a nice woman and we need someone to help you,” I told her.
“I’ll send her down to your apartment and she can help you!”
One strike against Loretta was her bedside manner—way too bossy for Pearl, who was accustomed to being the boss herself. Understandably, Pearl hated being treated like a child and felt embarrassed to need help, especially in the bathroom.
Second, Loretta was no friend to Katie. She complained that my dog dripped water all over the floor and that having her around was “unsanitary.”
“I won’t clean up after her,” she huffed. Nor would she feed Katie, a custom that my dog had long grown accustomed to.
Insensitive and rigid, Loretta failed to grasp the intense bond between Katie and Pearl, nor the therapeutic value of having Katie present.
Two weeks later, Loretta was gone.
Next was La-Teesha, a much younger woman who loved dogs and happily played with Katie (and overfed her) but spent most of her time on her cell phone, talking to her boyfriend. She wasn’t very interested in Granny’s care and treated her as a nuisance. We also found some of Granny’s English Spode china in her tote bag. She lasted a week.
After these two mismatches, we finally hit gold with a woman from the Republic of Georgia, Naia, who had been a licensed physician in her native country and now worked as a nurse’s aide in the United States. Georgia, I explained to Pearl, had been a Soviet Socialist Republic before the Soviet Union split apart.
“She a Russian?” asked Granny, suspicious of anyone I suggested after the last catastrophes. “A Communist?” she joked.
“Just meet her,” I insisted, desperate to find someone right away. “We’re very lucky to get her. She’s actually a doctor.”
“But does she like dogs?” Pearl asked. “I thought that first aide was going to cook Katie up into a stew for dinner.”
“She loves dogs. Just meet her.”
When I opened Pearl’s front door the day of the interview, there was Naia, a beautiful young woman in her early thirties with long dark hair and magnificently arched eyebrows framing the most striking blue eyes I’d ever seen. As we talked, I was impressed by her seriousness and intelligence. And I was grateful to know that she could check Pearl’s blood pressure and pulse, help her with physical rehab, monitor her medications, and easily get her in and out of the bed with no assistance. Not to mention the cooking and cleaning. She was a godsend.
Over the next few years, Naia would become a treasured member of our family—Katie’s new keeper and the granddaughter that Granny never had.
But things were shaky at first. No surprise there. To put it politely, Pearl was aloof and not very receptive to Naia’s help.
“But I tried not to take it personally,” Naia later told me. “What I liked about Pearl was that she wasn’t phony. What you saw was what you got.”
I wasn’t the easiest person to handle either, I admit. At first, I was overprotective and controlling, checking in too frequently to make sure that Pearl was being properly taken care of.
“Glenn was a bit bossy,” Naia later told Lee. “But I admired his dedication. He used to come into the kitchen, open the refrigerator, and ask, ‘Why isn’t it full?’ If I had one flavor of ice cream in the freezer, he wanted two. Everything was for Pearl. ‘Take her to the movies, restaurant, hairdresser.’ Glenn wanted everything perfect for her.”
As the weeks rolled by, I was impressed by Naia, though Pearl still resisted her help and was predictably cold. Once she saw how capable she was in terms of medical care, however, she started complaining about her housekeeping and cooking.
“This place is a mess and she can’t cook,” huffed Oldest. “Did you taste that stew? They’d serve that in jail!”
I started laughing and couldn’t stop.
A few nights later, after tasting the “foreign soup” that Naia had cooked up, Pearl was at it again. “This tastes weird,” she scowled. “How about a matzo ball?” Naia soon caught on and made up lists of Pearl’s favorite foods.
“I like chicken—nice and spicy,” she ordered, but Naia refused, having been told by the doctor that Pearl could no longer eat spicy food.
“No Graaaaany,” she told her, seamlessly adopting our pet name (and stretching it out just as we mispronounced it) for Pearl. “Not too much spice.”
“Can you bake?” Granny asked.
“No, not really. But I’ll buy you anything you want.”
“Don’t bother,” she shrugged, “Glenn will do it,” and off she went into the bedroom to watch TV, leaving Naia alone to ponder her difficult charge.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Georgia Peach
Things were humming along perfectly.
Naia ran Pearl’s household with great industry and was the most caring, meticulous aide anyone could ask for. I trusted her completely and was thankful for her attention to detail.
And it wasn’t long before Oldest appreciated Naia too. Instead of merely tolerating her, Pearl began to genuinely like her—and they became friends. They took long walks on the Esplanade with Katie and spent hours in Pearl’s bedroom—trying on clothes and jewelry, watching TV, talking about news and fashion, or paging through scrapbooks as Pearl reminisced about her early years with Arthur.
“After two or three months of working with her, it was fun,” said Naia. “Pearl had a great sense of humor and was very sensitive to me. Some days when I was fighting with my boyfriend on the phone and was upset afterward, she always knew it (craftily eavesdropping) and she’d try to cheer me up with little comments.”
“Men are strange,” Granny opined. “Don’t get so upset about so little. If they’re loyal and worth it, let them come back to you—like a dog; otherwise, let them off the leash!”
Then, without missing a beat, Pearl would pull out her ancient metal Land O’Lakes sweet cream butter box, where she kept her mother’s prized recipes. “Let’s try one,” she
’d say, and within minutes they were in the kitchen, baking a cake together as Katie sat on the floor, following their every move.
As their relationship developed, Naia did everything possible to improve Pearl’s quality of life. Although Oldest had come back home from the hospital as an invalid, she regained her mobility thanks to Naia’s encouragement and care. “Pearl could soon walk with no assistance, go to the bathroom, take a shower, and dress herself,” said Naia. “I left the door open to her bedroom and kept an eye on her, but she was fine.”
Having Naia on hand 24/7 allowed me to protect the essence of my relationship with Pearl as it had always been—conversational partners, confidantes, and neighborhood comrades-in-arms. All the other caretaking Naia did. Even though Pearl could no longer clean, shop for groceries, do the laundry, or go the doctor, bank, or dry cleaner alone, I think she secretly enjoyed the luxury of having someone do it all for her.
Part of Pearl’s rehabilitation extended to updating her wardrobe and linens. “Granny is wearing old, ripped clothes,” reported Naia. “Everything, including the towels, has holes in it.” So I gave Naia a credit card and told her to start shopping, and off they went to Pearl’s favorite store, Loehmann’s—“great bargains!” Pearl enthused.
“One day, when we were at the store,” Naia remembered, “I was looking at a wildly flowered blouse when Granny said, ‘It’s too busy.’ I didn’t understand what she meant. I didn’t want to embarrass myself with my lack of English. And she kept repeating, ‘It’s very busy.’ Finally, I asked, ‘What is this busy?’ She explained and we both laughed about it for days.”
Girl talk now filled Pearl’s apartment 24/7. One day, I walked into Pearl’s bedroom and saw that it had been turned into a salon. Pearl was on the bed, having her hair, nails, and makeup done by Naia, delighted with hot pink nail polish and the sensation of being primped and pampered. Katie sat on the bed alertly watching as Pearl had her hair set, curled, and blow-dried, something my dog was quite accustomed to.
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