If You Don't Have Anything Nice to Say

by Leila Sales

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I wasn’t trying to judge you. I’m just … surprised.” But maybe I shouldn’t even have been surprised, because wasn’t this exactly what she had tried to tell me months ago?

  “I’m sorry it sounds like I’m mad at you,” she said. “I’m just really frustrated. I don’t know what to do. At the end of last year, I honestly thought that I wouldn’t come back this year. That was my plan. I spent most of that incredibly long car trip from Oklahoma to California practicing how I was going to tell Mom and Dad thank you for supporting my acting career, but now I need to take a semester or two off while I figure out what I want to do with myself.”

  And then she had pulled into our driveway and walked inside to a changed family.

  “So when I lost my college acceptance,” I said slowly, “you had to go back.”

  “It wasn’t your fault,” she said.

  “But one of us had to keep doing what we were supposed to be doing,” I said. “And if it couldn’t be me, then it had to be you.” Her silence confirmed it. “Do you think Turn Them Toward the Sun doesn’t actually work at all?” I asked.

  “Of course it works,” she said immediately. Our faith in Mom had always been absolute. But now there were so many cracks in it, I wasn’t sure how it could hold itself together.

  “I’m just saying, I was supposed to be extraordinary at words. And you were supposed to be extraordinary on stage. Everything was set up for us to be extraordinary. And somehow, it got screwed up. So what does that mean? That Turn Them Toward the Sun doesn’t work? Or that we don’t work?”

  “I don’t know,” Emerson said, “and I have to go. I have to be at rehearsal in ten minutes.”

  “So what are you going to do?” I asked her.

  “I’m going to keep doing what I’ve been doing,” she said as though it were obvious, then added, “What else would I do?”

  She had a point. It’s simplest to just keep being who you are, and who everyone expects you to be. It’s when you turn out to be somebody different that everything goes to hell.

  21

  Richard and Kisha came back to me over the next couple of days, asking me to draft other apologies for them, and it wasn’t long before Marco, Zeke, and Jazmyn were requesting my services, too. It turned out I excelled at saying sorry, as long as I wasn’t saying it for myself. My Repentance time was jam-packed with consultations with my fellow Vibers. They would tell me their stories about each different person who hated them, and I would come up with the right words to try to make that person change his or her mind.

  Sometimes my heart really did go out to their victims. For example, Marco asked me to write an apology to his eight-year-old daughter. He said he felt terrible about what his scandal had put her through, but he didn’t know how to tell her that. “I’ve tried to make it up to her,” he told me. “I bought her every Monster High doll, but she still won’t forgive me.” And it made me feel so sad: for Marco, who did not understand, and for his daughter, who could get an apology with her father’s name signed at the end, but not the apology that he really meant.

  And sometimes my heart didn’t go out to them at all. Like the woman who told Richard that he was living proof that “dumb southern hicks shouldn’t be allowed to procreate.” I wrote her an apology with the taste of vinegar on my tongue.

  Of course no one told Kevin and Valerie that I was doing the other Vibers’ Repentance for them. Because if our advisors had known, I’m sure they would have told me to stop, and everyone else wanted me to keep going. Technically, they had mentioned no rule against it.

  Late one night in our second week, after everyone had gone to bed, I was sitting out on the porch again, reflecting upon a news story I’d read during Repentance that evening about a teacher in Missouri who had that very day told one of his students that her parents weren’t her “real mom and dad” because they’d adopted her. Now that teacher was being systematically torn to shreds. I wondered if he would get fired for saying that. He probably would. The school had nothing to gain by standing by him, and if they fired him, they could distance themselves from the whole scandal. The teacher hadn’t apologized yet, and I’d considered e-mailing him some advice but did not, of course, actually do so.

  “I wasn’t sure I’d see you out here tonight. I thought you’d be exhausted,” I heard Abe say behind me.

  I turned and gave him a smile. “What does exhaustion have to do with it?” I asked.

  That was something else that had become part of my everyday routine at Revibe: coming out here late at night and running into Abe. I didn’t know that he and I had much in common in our previous lives, since his seemed to have been a riot of off-limits snowboarding, late-night sailing, and DUIs, whereas mine was … well, none of that, obviously. In the real world, we probably would have never started talking in the first place. But here at Revibe, somehow he and I kept finding more to talk about. I guess it beat our other option, of sitting in dark rooms and facing our nightmares alone.

  “Word is that you’ve done a lot of Repentance today,” Abe said, settling next to me.

  “So?” I said. “Do you want me to write your apologies, too?”

  “Hardly,” Abe said. “I don’t want some generic, one-size-fits-all Repentance.”

  “Hey!” I feigned offense. “I’ll have you know every one of my apologies is custom-made.”

  “I’m sure they are,” he said, “but I maintain complete creative control over mine. And not to brag, but they are top-shelf.”

  I was intrigued by this, because out of all of us, I thought Abe had the least to apologize for. The rest of us had made choices of varying degrees of unwiseness, but he hadn’t chosen to be born to a master criminal. “Can I read one?” I asked.

  “Sure.” He took out his phone, pulled up an e-mail, then passed it to me.

  Dear Helen, it read, Thank you for taking the time to list all the ways that I’m letting down the human race. I want you to know that I agree with you wholeheartedly. I am spoiled and exploitative and not that bright. Without you, I might not have realized these things about myself—or might have realized them, but never bothered to try to address them. Your list galvanized me into action. I am now trying to be a better person by praying every day, doing charity work (I’ve been volunteering at a hospital and it’s opened my eyes to those less fortunate than me), and even doing yoga in my wheelchair each morning. I understand that none of this can ever make up for the destruction I’ve wreaked—and whatever I do, it will always be too little, too late—but I want you to know that I’m devoting the rest of my life to trying to make amends to you and everyone else I’ve hurt. With infinite regret, Abe Krisch.

  I looked up from his phone to see him grinning at me. “Jealous?” he asked.

  “A little, yeah. You don’t think you’re laying it on just a tiny bit too thick, though?” I said.

  “Hey, you should have read my earlier draft. It was, like, three levels beyond this. Valerie told me I should rein it in or else no one would believe me.”

  I handed the phone back to him. “Well, I’ve got to give it to you, that is an impassioned apology.”

  “I told you I was good at it.”

  “So how come Kisha and Richard aren’t asking you to do their Repentance for them?” I asked.

  “Because they don’t know that I’m good at it. You led with all the stuff about how you’re an award-winning speller and you were going to be a writer and all that. I didn’t breathe a word about my e-mail-writing talents.”

  “Strategic,” I acknowledged.

  “I try.”

  “But you don’t…” I bit my lip. “You don’t actually mean any of that stuff you wrote, do you?”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Are you telling me I don’t do yoga in my wheelchair every morning?”

  “No, you do, and you’re so great at it, too. You really use your breath. It’s all, like, in your core…”

  “Hah.” He shoved my shoulder lightly.

/>   “But you don’t actually believe that this is your fault, do you? Because it’s not. It’s your father’s fault. Don’t you know that?”

  Abe looked at me like I was a little bit crazy. “Of course I know that. That’s the first thing I said when I met you all, remember?”

  “So why are you admitting to something, and apologizing for something, that you didn’t do?”

  “Because I have to,” he said simply. “Look, I don’t care whether a billion Helens out there know the truth about me. I could devote the entire rest of my life to trying to convince them that I’m innocent, and they wouldn’t ever be convinced.

  “But you know what? I’ve come to terms with that. I don’t need every Helen to think that I’m innocent. I know that I’m innocent, and that’s enough. I just need every Helen not to hate me. I need to be able to go back to college someday and make friends there, and get a job without the boss throwing my résumé straight into the garbage, and visit nursing homes without getting fucking spat on.”

  Me too, I thought. That was exactly what I needed, too.

  “If all I need to do for that to happen is take responsibility?” he went on. “Hell, I’ll take responsibility for anything they tell me. I’ll tell them I personally was stealing their dollar bills out of their piggy banks and eating them for breakfast, if that’s what it takes. And do you want my advice, Winter?”

  I didn’t reply. I suspected I was going to get his advice whether I wanted it or not.

  “You should do the same. Admit to yourself that you’ll never convince them you were ‘just kidding,’ you’ll never convince them you’re not a racist, you’ll never convince them of anything. Say what they want you to say and move on. You’re smart, and talented, and funny, and pretty, and you don’t have to let this dominate your entire life.”

  I stared at him, shocked by all of it. By the idea that this didn’t have to dominate my life indefinitely. The idea that I could never convince them of anything, no matter how hard I tried or how true it was. The idea that I was talented and pretty. Could I accept any of that? And what did Abe know, anyway—about me, about anyone?

  He gave a nervous little cough and added, “That’s my opinion, anyway. But obviously you should do whatever feels right to you.”

  I nodded and still didn’t speak.

  “Okay.” Abe cleared his throat again. “I’m going to go. Sorry for telling you what to do. It’s none of my business.”

  “It’s okay,” I said, finally finding my voice. “Thank you.”

  He nodded, lifted the parking brake on his wheelchair, and drove into the house.

  I continued to sit out on the porch for a while longer, thinking. I got what Abe was saying. I got why it was a good strategy and why it worked for him.

  But there was one big difference between Abe and me. And it was that, as he said, he knew he was innocent, and for him that was enough.

  I didn’t know that I was innocent.

  So for me, that could never be enough.

  22

  “I’m concerned,” Kevin said in my coaching session a couple days later, “that you’ve been here for two weeks and you still haven’t written a single apology. Is that right?”

  I nodded, although technically, that wasn’t right. I had written dozens of apologies at this point, signed with almost everyone’s names except my own. But of course Kevin didn’t know that.

  “Do you want to explain why that is?” Kevin asked.

  He knew this by now, but he didn’t like the answer. I gave it again. “I don’t want to put any words into the world again. The last time people heard the words I had to say, it destroyed my life. I can’t believe that it would go any differently this time around.”

  “But this time, Valerie and I would vet your words first,” Kevin said. “That’s why we’re here.”

  “You can’t know everything, though. You can’t predict the future. You could tell me my words are safe, but there could always be someone out there who disagrees with you.” I tried to give him a smile. “I don’t doubt that you guys know what you’re doing.”

  “Good,” Kevin said, “because remember, Winter, I have been exactly where you are now.”

  “Right,” I said. It was helpful, I told myself, that Kevin had been “one of us.” That he knew this shame and paralysis firsthand. But at the same time, it made him into a bit of an annoying know-it-all: he wouldn’t even consider that maybe what worked for him wouldn’t work for me. I said, “I can’t afford even one more mistake.”

  “People aren’t going to get mad at you for a simple apology,” Kevin said, his frustration leaking through his soothing coach voice. “Look at the satisfaction the rest of the group is deriving from their apologies. Look how much lighter they feel. Don’t you want that?”

  “People can get mad at you for anything,” I argued. “I was just reading about an Olympic athlete who didn’t put her hand on her heart for the national anthem, and she got bashed online. She didn’t do anything wrong! You don’t even have to put your hand on your heart for the national anthem! And people posted that she was unpatriotic. Can you imagine? She literally brought home a medal for her nation, and somehow she still winds up being unpatriotic. You can’t always predict what will set people off. So you’re right that people shouldn’t get mad at me for a simple apology, but that doesn’t mean they won’t.”

  “Who even is this athlete?” Kevin said, sounding tired. “Why were you even reading this? We don’t give you internet privileges so you can read this sort of junk. We give you internet privileges so you can apologize.”

  I was silent. It was true that I’d continued to spend my Repentance time digging into case after case of public shaming, reading the articles and the victims’ statements and the disparaging comment threads filled with infighting. The names and crimes changed, but in essence it was always the same. I knew that wasn’t what I was supposed to be doing, but, well, that’s what I was doing.

  “Just write an apology,” Kevin told me. “It doesn’t have to be complicated. I know you take pride in all your big words, and that’s great, but you don’t need to set such high standards for this. ‘Dear so-and-so, I’m sorry I hurt you. I was wrong, please forgive me. Sincerely, Winter Halperin.’”

  I refrained from rolling my eyes. The apologies I had written for the other Vibers were far more poetic than that. I felt almost like I ought to give Kevin some tips.

  “I can’t,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

  “So then how do you intend to do Repentance?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. I am repentant, though. I feel repentant.”

  “You feel guilty,” Kevin told me. “It’s not the same. You don’t feel repentant until you’ve done acts of Repentance.” He sighed deeply and pressed his fingertips together, as though trying to center himself. “Okay, look, let’s try this. Let’s set aside Sintra Gabel and your friend Jason and your parents and all of them for today. They’re complicated; I get it. You have a lot tied up in whether they accept your apologies. The stakes there are too high for you to dive right in. So instead, just give me the name of someone you’re angry at as a result of your situation. Anyone. Throw it on out here.”

  “Lisa Rushall,” I snapped.

  He googled her name and pulled up her website. “Is this her?” he asked.

  I scowled at her messy hair, her closed-mouth smile. How many times had I looked at this photo and been filled with a directionless rage? “The very one.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Let’s just practice. Let’s pretend like you’re writing an apology to Lisa Rushall. What do you say?”

  “I say … Why did you have to repost me in the first place? What were you possibly hoping to get out of it? Did you ever stop to think—”

  “That’s not an apology,” Kevin interrupted. “You know it’s not. And you know people aren’t going to forgive you until you start to apologize. Remember: I was wrong. Try again.”

  I blew out a long breath and tried
to imagine that this wasn’t my life. If this were an apology for Kisha, or Marco, or anyone other than me, I’d have nothing invested in it and I’d know how to do it.

  I replied, “I’d say: Lisa, I’m so sorry that I’m such an immoral person. I have a horrible, offensive sense of humor and an overinflated sense of how interesting my opinions are. Thank you for pointing that out to me. Because of you, I’m really getting my act together. I’ve started taking better care of myself by doing yoga every morning, and taking care of my spiritual health by praying frequently and giving back to the community. I know none of this behavior can make up for my earlier crimes, and I must live with that guilt until the day I die, but I wanted to let you know that I am trying to turn my life around from that dark place of ignorance and judgment, and it is all thanks to you! Most sincerely, Winter Halperin.”

  “See?” Kevin said. He’d been typing the whole time I was talking, and now he turned his computer screen so I could read the words I’d dictated. He’d put it all into the contact form on Lisa Rushall’s website. He’d misspelled “ignorance” with an “e” instead of an “a,” but otherwise it was what I’d said. He smiled. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

  “Sure,” I said dubiously. “I guess spitting out a bunch of lines that you want to hear, even if I don’t mean them, isn’t that hard.”

  “We’ve been over this,” Kevin reminded me. “It doesn’t matter what you mean. You need to get that idea right out of your head. It matters what you do. In life, that is always true. You didn’t mean to be offensive online, but you did an offensive thing; no one cares about your intentions. You don’t mean your apology here, but you give it anyway; no one knows what’s going on inside your head. Actions matter. Intentions don’t.”