“Mommy is gone.”
“Gone? But where did she go? I have to give her my new stories.”
Mo tried to hand her father her stack of stories but he wouldn’t take them from her.
“No more stories, Moriko,” he said. “Mommy died.”
In time, Mo learned her mother had been battling cancer for over two years before she died. Then, during a simple procedure at the hospital, Mrs. Ishikawa went into kidney failure and was too ill to recover. She had never thought her and Mo’s conversation about the Incredible Sleepy, Shrinking, and Shedding Woman would be their last.
However, none of this was explained to Mo by her father. After his wife passed away, Mr. Ishikawa never spoke of her again and barely spoke at all. He worked late six days a week to avoid their house and spent his days off alone in his den watching Japanese television. He didn’t have friends—most of his family still lived across the world—and the only communication he had with his daughter was to give her commands such as Clean your room, Study for your test, and Go to Stanford. Mo felt closer to her deceased mother than to her father—he was the real ghost in their house.
Even after thirteen years, Mo and Mr. Ishikawa had never adjusted to being a family of two, but became more and more like strangers living under the same roof.
“Dad’s staying extra late at the office tonight,” Mo said, and glanced at her clock. “What’s taking him so long? How many Japanese people need legal advice this late on a Saturday?”
Her bedroom rattled as the garage door opened below it. She heard her father park his car and enter the house.
“Oh gosh, he’s home,” Mo said. “Here I go! Wish me luck, Peaches.”
The cat gave her a look that said, Go jump off a bridge instead. Mo neatly organized the information about Columbia University in the order she planned to disclose it. She walked down the stairs and found her father in the dining room. He was eating a bowl of soup and reading a Japanese newspaper.
“Hi, Dad. How was work?” she asked.
Mr. Ishikawa never looked up from his newspaper.
“Fine, fine, fine,” he mumbled. “Are you all packed for your trip tomorrow?”
“Almost,” Mo said, and cleared her throat to begin her prepared speech. “Dad, we need to talk. I don’t mean to ambush you, but we need to discuss my education—”
“Ambush?” Mr. Ishikawa asked. “What’s an ambush?”
She hadn’t planned for any interruptions but wasn’t surprised. Most of Mr. Ishikawa’s English died with his wife, consequently turning his daughter into a tutor/interpreter extraordinaire.
“Oh, an ambush is like a surprise,” Mo explained.
“Surprise?” he asked. “You’re going to surprise me?”
“There’s no surprise, Dad. I just need to have a conversation with you and I didn’t want you to be caught off guard by the subject matter.”
“Is something wrong?”
“Well, that depends on you,” she said, and went back to her speech. “I know it’s always been your dream to see me go to Stanford—”
“Oh yes,” Mr. Ishikawa said with a big nod. “Stanford is a great school. A great school will lead to a great job, and a great job will lead to a very successful life.”
“Um… right,” Mo said. “But after a lot of thought and reflection, I’ve decided Stanford may not be—”
“Reflection?” Mr. Ishikawa asked.
“Yes, to reflect on something also means to think about a certain situation.”
“Oh yes, yes, yes,” Mr. Ishikawa said. “You’re a smart girl and smart girls think quite a bit. That’s why you were accepted to Stanford.”
This was more difficult than Mo thought it would be and she had thought of almost every scenario possible—including a war breaking out in the middle of her speech. She tried to stick to the words she had prepared, but it was harder and harder to focus the more her father interrupted her.
“Stanford is what I’m trying to talk to you about,” she said. “You know, adulthood is about difficult decisions, and I don’t want to live with regrets. I’ve been thinking that Stanford may not be the right choice for me.”
“You’re being too hard on yourself, Moriko,” Mr. Ishikawa said. “You’ve studied very hard and earned very good grades. You deserve to go to Stanford as much as any other student. Don’t be afraid.”
The only thing Mo was afraid of was not getting her point across and she started to panic that she wouldn’t. Her father had trouble with English, but he was no dummy. Mr. Ishikawa probably knew what his daughter was up to and wasn’t as lost in translation as he appeared.
“Dad, you’re not listening to what I’m saying—”
“So many people applied to Stanford, but only the smartest were accepted.”
“Yes, I heard you loud and clear, now if you could just hear me out—”
“Stanford is a great opportunity and guarantees a great career—”