The Teacher

The Teacher: Part II Testament, Chapter 26

CHAPTER 26

THE FILM WRAPPED UP ON a Sunday afternoon with my character, Chloe, falling out of a 4th story bedroom window to her fictional death. That effect came courtesy of the green-screen magic of CGI. Actually, I fell only a few feet back onto a stack of mattresses with four spotters making sure nothing at all could go wrong. My troubled character never was able to overcome her obsession to fill the voracious void in her child's empty abandoned heart.

I said my goodbyes to the director, a few of the other cast members and crew I'd grown close to, checked out of the Waldorf and flagged down a cab to LaGuardia. Two hours later my uneventful Frontier Airlines flight was landing in Milwaukee. A turbo-prop to Green Bay, a one-way Avis rental to Manistique, and before dusk that same night I was boxing up the fragments of my former life as a mortal, all while fantasizing about what the future might hold.

Holden told me to bring only the essentials; no furniture, few clothes, all with the intention of getting whatever we needed once we got to Madison. There are advantages when money is no object. Holden also decided to just keep the apartment in Manistique, so I packed the Hummer with our computer equipment, a few personal items, and early the next morning I was on the road headed for Madison, Wisconsin.

Soon, I'd picked up Highway 41 to Green Bay, set the Hummer's cruise control to a state-trooper-safe 70, plugged my iPod into the music system, sat back and took in the majestic natural beauty of rural Wisconsin as acre after green, farmed, growing acre passed by. Rolling in from the northeast on Highway 151, soon the impressive white granite dome of the Wisconsin State Capitol loomed on the horizon.

Highway 151 turned into West Washington Avenue, and following it took me right to the steps of the impressive structure. Close to my destination, a slow drive around the Capitol concourse and my GPS began barking to take a right on Wisconsin Avenue, which I did, then a left on Langdon, a few more blocks then a right on N. Henry and the old 6-story, 45-room ivy-covered Delta Gamma frat house, seeping with University of Wisconsin history, was right there nesting on Lake Mendota like a pregnant mallard just as Holden described.

Its cornerstone proudly had 1900 deeply engraved. Architectural evidence of the its age were the many chimneys rising up from every corner, inside and around the building from a period when each room had a fireplace that served as the primary source of heat during the long, frigid Wisconsin winters. The steep, slanted original thick slate roof was another impressive feature—definitely designed to endure the ravages of time. Walls made of heavy rough-surfaced limestone block, blackened with the grime of decades, the structure looked more like a fortress than a frat house. From the street-side entrance the building went back half a football field to the lakefront. Opening directly to the water was the boathouse, built right into the structure.

Rising up two extra stories over the dorm rooms, and a ballroom on the top floor, was a spiral turret with an observation deck, accessible through a pull-down staircase. Leading out through tall French doors in the ballroom were a series of patios with a clear view of Lake Mendota. Holden and I would live in the master suite made up of a den, living room, three bedrooms, a bath, a library, and laundry room. All were furnished with sturdy, handcrafted, pegged, tongue-and-grove period oak pieces, many featuring carvings of initials of former students who'd left their mark honoring memories so steamy they'd been seared for all time right into the walls of the frat house.

IT TOOK ME LESS THAN AN HOUR to unload the Hummer. It was a hot late-summer August evening so I decided to explore my new neighborhood on the east edge of the University of Wisconsin campus.

Following N. Henry back to Langdon, I headed west along a row of frat houses, among them Alpha Epsilon and Beta Theta, proudly perched on the curve as Langdon bent toward the campus. Before reaching the student center, Memorial Union, on my left was the old original library complex, and on the right the massive, red-brick Gymnasium and Armory building; a colossal structure designed to look like a medieval castle.