Clarissa Ascendant

Cancer, Divorce, and Gene Kelly

In this past year, my dear friend Clarissa got divorced and fought a particularly aggressive form of uterine cancer, all while living through the same isolating, challenging pandemic that the rest of us earthlings have been saddled with.

Obviously, it’s been a difficult stretch. Clarissa underwent a hysterectomy, radiation, and six rounds of chemo, and the nausea and the pain down to her bones almost drove her mad, but she just pulled the curtains, crawled into her bed, and survived. In between chemo appointments she hit up an old school friend for medical marijuana and watched old movies. She and I donned masks and went for staid walks in the woods with our dogs. We speculated about her now-ex-husband. We agreed on narcissist and pathological liar, but maybe sociopath or sadist, or perhaps just a garden-variety unredeemable dick? The jury is still out, but we had fun and spitfire rage examining the evidence.

In this dark year, I have seen her lose her footing. I’ve seen her lose her faith, her perspective, and her will. Somehow, she managed to emerge wiser, happier, and even more abundantly human.

When we sat down for a post-divorce celebration tea yesterday, I told her how edgy her hair is. A few months ago, she was Lex Luther; now, she’s 60’s Joey Heatherton. She pulls her fingers through the honey-blond scruff and grins. She tells a story about scaring a kid at a restaurant the night before. She had emerged from the restroom at a take-out restaurant and mistook the kid, masked, sitting at a table looking at his phone, for her son. “Hello, honey,” she said, and she pantomimed the look of terror on the kid’s face. She tried to explain the mix-up to him but had to give up because she was laughing too hard.

This is classic Clarissa.

We say our goodbyes on a rainy New Haven sidewalk, and I notice a bounce to her step, despite the grim weather. I almost expect her to burst into an elegant, unexpected dance move, like Gene Kelly in “Singin’ in the Rain.” It would be an apt metaphor, and definitely not out of character.