HER SKINNY JEANS FINALLY FIT ELIZABETH ELLEN

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The woman was accused of saying something she hadn’t said by other women. Or, rather, other women had accused her of apologising for something for which she had not apologised. 

It was all over the Internet, the woman’s friend said. 

    The woman Googled herself and saw the accusations in articles written by other women.

    The woman had made no public apologies –for this thing or any other – so she didn’t understand how she could be called an apologist. The woman had a history of stubbornness when it came to apologising. It was an inaccurate label at best. 

    She had not, for example, apologised to her mother years ago when it was clear it was she who had let the dog out unleashed and the dog had run away. (The dog had been ‘in heat’ also, but that, her mother had said, was beside the point.)

    Nor had she apologised to her husband for suggesting they publish a book authored by the man who had twice broken up their relationship. (Each time their relationship had been already weakened by other factors that had nothing to do with the man, but that, her husband said, was beside the point.) 

    The woman lay on the floor of their bedroom weeping and waiting for her husband to console her. Instead her husband said, “I don’t know what to say.” Instead the husband moved out of the house and into an apartment. (This was one of the times their relationship was weakened.)

    Weeks went by without the woman apologising and still she was an apologist. 

    She did not call her husband to apologise about asking to publish the other man’s book. She did not call her mother. She slept in a sleeping bag on her closet floor. She forgot, for the most part, to eat. She got into text fights with the man who wrote the book her husband didn’t want to publish. She Googled herself obsessively, drank and smoked cigarettes. Still, she did not apologize.

    Finally, her skinny jeans fit.