The Tutor

I tapped the Bluetooth earpiece to accept the incoming call.

"Hi, Tori," I sighed. "No, I'm in the car on the way home. Twenty minutes' blessed relief from emails. Yeah." I laughed a little bitterly. "I swear to Christ the partners wouldn't know their heads were on their shoulders if it wasn't for me. No, of course they haven't mentioned a raise. Well, of course I want one, but it's not that simple. The company culture is---- no, not just an old boys' club, but sure that's part of it. It's like they literally don't understand that a woman could possibly ever be the only breadwinner in the home."

I idled at a stop light, and let her get a word in edgewise.

"I know, right? Divorcing Jason was the best thing that ever happened to me. I'm happier, I'm in the best shape of my life, Fiona's happier.... Oh, she's doing as well as can be expected for eighteen. She's a senior now, and she's so worried she won't pass her math final, so I hired a tutor for her. Oh, it was simple. The community college has a list online of tutors available by subject. I picked out a Japanese student. At least, she doesn't have an accent, so I guess she's American, but her family is from Japan, you know. Sure, if you say so...."

I had to wait until traffic eased up enough for a safe left turn. Tori chattered about her problems, and I made appropriate noises in response.

"Well listen, Tori, I'm getting close to home now, so I'll have to let you go," I said when I was still a few blocks away. "We really have to get coffee sometime. No, I know, me too. Yeah. Okay. And the same to Bella from me. Love you now. Bye-bye."

I sighed again as the call ended. I had put on a brave face for Tori, as you do for a best friend who is doing less well (on paper) than you are, but in reality, the tutor was an expense I hadn't budgeted for, even at the bargain community-college rates, and we were fast approaching a holiday season I had no idea how I was going to afford. There were gym memberships I could try to shake loose, and maybe I could use Fiona's slipping grades as an excuse to cancel some streaming services, but food was not getting any cheaper, and we had a large circle of acquaintance that had gotten used to lavish gifts from us back when we were a two-income household.

I made a face at the thought, even by association, of Jason, and put my chin up: whatever else happened, at least we had cut that fucking asshole out of our lives.

I could see our driveway now, and the tutor's little white hybrid, used but still quite serviceable, was parked just to the side to give me room to pull in. I smiled faintly. Contrary to the reputation of college students in our suburb, Kanae was always so thoughtful and respectful; I hoped some of that could rub off on Fiona, even more than the math, which I privately agreed that she would never need to use again. Not that Fiona was a terror; but any hormonal teenage girl is going to clash with her equally hormonal mother, and I did wish that she would occasionally be the one to reach out to apologize first.

Just as I was walking up the pathway to the front door, my phone started buzzing with emails from the partners. Setting it to "Do not disturb" for the duration of the car ride home had felt like a stroke of genius at the time, but in practice it now meant that I started the evening digging myself out of a hole.

Fiona and Kanae were at the kitchen table, their heads bent over a textbook, when I entered. I had a vague sense that they were breathing a little too heavily to have been there long, and there was an indefinable something in the air that I wasn't used to; not quite a scent, not quite humidity, but something like both. But I hardly registered any of it as I greeted them in my usual half-attentive way, already scanning through the emails on my phone and prioritizing them by emergency, urgent, must-respond, wait for tomorrow, and request further details.

Fiona's smile was brilliant as she replied to my greeting: "Hi mom! How was work?"

Both Kanae and I looked at her curiously. The question was not in her usual stock of responses.

"It was... fine, honey," I said, deciding not to ask her who she was and what she had done with my daughter, if only for the sake of company. I held up my phone. "It's not done yet, though, so I'll be in the living room if you need me."

"Okay!" Fiona's hair bounced as she nodded, and there was a suppressed giggle in her voice. And her hair didn't bounce entirely in the way it would if it were thoroughly dry. None of these details caught my attention at the time, but they would later, in thinking back over it.

Kanae's low, even voice returned Fiona's attention to the subject of equations, and I decamped to the couch, where I kicked off my high heels, unbuttoned my top button, and pulled out my laptop to deal with the emails that, my phone informed me, were still buzzing in.

An hour or so later, I looked up in surprise to see Kanae looming over me. She was tall for an Asian girl, her height accentuated by a slender frame and long sleek black hair that fell half down her back. She wore owlish glasses, through which her dark eyes blinked at me, and her flat lips, curved in a resting moué, compressed slightly.

She gave a slight bow to acknowledge my attention.

"Don't get up," she said, putting forth a slender white hand as I began to set my laptop aside. "I just wanted to tell you that I was heading home. Fiona is making excellent progress."

Something in her tone made me nervous in a way I couldn't account for, some hint of authority, maybe even arrogance, I hadn't noticed before. "Don't get up," like she could tell me how to behave; "Fiona is making excellent progress," like a Victorian headmistress. But I didn't get up, and smiled rather confusedly through the hazy alarm bells ringing in the back of my mind.

"Of course," I said, and hesitated awkwardly. I knew it was in my script to bring up payment next, and she waited, caught by the implied pause at the end of my phrase, not remotely smiling, but some part of me swore there was enjoyment in her eyes at my discomfort.

"How much----" I finally pushed out, lamely, despite knowing perfectly well what the tutoring rate was, as I had paid it weekly for the last two months. She inclined her head in understanding.

"I think it will be best if you pay me every other week, Ms. Pattinson," she said. Her voice was tranquil, but I cocked my head at something indefinable in it again: a note of assurance, of knowing better than me. I didn't want to let it get to me: of course, the week would be somewhat simpler to manage without her fee subtracted from my balance, and a direct deposit would hit before her next visit, making paying two weeks then much more manageable than paying one week today. But she shouldn't know anything about that.

"All right," I said, realizing that I had waited too long to reply to her. "If it suits you better."

She smiled faintly at that, and bowed slightly again, and turned to go with a murmured, formulaic thanks for my hospitality.

I stayed staring on the couch until I heard her car start up and drive away, and then I went to the kitchen, where Fiona was putting away her books with evident relish.

"Fiona!" I said. "Did you tell that girl about our finances?"

She looked at me blankly. There was something in her face besides surprise, some subterranean fear or remorse or hostility, I couldn't interpret which, but the sincerity in her voice as she denied my accusation was genuine.

"I don't know anything about our finances," she added, truthfully enough. I had set up a checking account in her name when she was twelve, and deposited her allowance into it every week, and when she turned eighteen one of my presents to her had been the PIN number to it, but I was aware that she rarely used it and still trusted me to provide all the necessities of life she had always been accustomed to.

I crossed my arms and frowned. For the first time, I noticed Fiona's eyes settle on the gap in my shirt where my cleavage could be seen, after I had unbuttoned the top button and pushed my breasts up by crossing my arms beneath them. I shook my head at her.

"Don't stare," I snapped. She colored guiltily, and turned away to take her book bag to her room. "Are you hungry?" I called after her.

For some reason she had to smother an explosion of laughter at that. "Yes," she finally choked out.

"For what?" I called back, and irritatingly enough, she smothered another laugh.

"Whatever," she said, and escaped to her room.

As I began to pull microwave dinners out of the freezer, I found myself revising my estimate of Kanae as being likely to teach my daughter thoughtfulness and respect.

The rest of the evening was uneventful; after dinner I returned to my emails and Fiona to her homework, and the routine went as it always did.

The next day followed the usual routine, and the one after that. The third day was Saturday, which I clocked as a half-day of remote work, still answering emails and looking up briefs the partners were too lazy or ignorant to find themselves; Fiona came down much later than usual, yawning gigantically and carrying a load of laundry.

I stared at her. She glowered back. "What?"

"My own daughter, doing laundry of her own volition?" I said brokenly, throwing all the astonishment I could into it. In response she made a despicable face at me and carried it to the laundry room. As she passed, I caught a whiff of something I couldn't place, something deeply familiar but which I hadn't scented in a long, long time.

It wasn't until she had started the spin cycle and headed back to her room, yawning, that I realized what the scent reminded me so powerfully of: it was my own discharge clinging to my panties when I used to masturbate as a young woman, back before Jason and his rough mauling hands had forever made all thought of sex utterly disgusting to me. I smiled faintly. So Fiona had spent the morning masturbating; good for her, I thought. She at least had a chance to grow up normal with her father out of the house. It was too late for her mother.

I was forty-three; I had married Jason and had Fiona right out of college, where I had gotten a degree he disapproved of, and had been a stay-at-home mother while she was very young; but once she started school I started working part-time, knowing that I had to build up a nest egg before I could divorce Jason. Ultimately I ended up having to get a half dozen restraining orders before the divorce went through. But he finally left us alone once the ink was dry, and last I'd heard was drinking himself to death somewhere back East.

I knew, theoretically, that I was attractive. My red hair, tanned skin, plump breasts, shapely ass and long legs were assets to me around the office; but I could no longer think of myself as a sexual being, not after what he had made sex to me. A series of abortive sessions with therapists who sounded baffled by my explanations of my history had left me convinced that he had screwed me up beyond repair. Maybe another woman could have weathered it just fine and gone out to find a hot stud the next morning, but not me. I had locked all that part of me away for good. I even avoided washing myself down there until I had to.

I had, of course, never brought any of this up with Fiona, and equally never asked her about her own budding sexuality. (My own mother had never mentioned mine to me, so it really hadn't ever entered my head.) But it was bittersweetly nostalgic to realize that she was jerking off in bed on a Saturday morning just like her mother used to do at her age; and I vowed that I would never let anything happen that would do to her what Jason had done to me.

I shook myself suddenly, rousing from the reverie that scent had caught me in, and applied myself once more to emails.

The days passed in their usual fashion, with nothing out of the ordinary, until it was once more tutoring day. Flush with a recent deposit, I told myself on the drive home that I would add a tip to Kanae's check and surprise her. "Wipe the smug look off her knowing little face" was not a phrase I actually used to myself, but something like it was in the back of my head, where emotions aren't quite formulated into words.

For once traffic was with me. Instead of my usual twenty minutes I made it home in eight; and grinning triumphantly at my untroubled phone, which had twelve minutes of Do Not Disturb left on it, I walked up to the door, opened it, and then dropped the phone on the threshold; it cracked, and spun catawampus into some bushes. But I did not notice, standing frozen, staring fixedly at the tableau I could not believe was in front of me.

Sitting exactly in the spot on the couch where I had been answering emails the week before, Kanae had her long slender legs spread open obscenely, panties still dangling from one stretched-out ankle. And in between those legs, copper hair bobbing enthusiastically, was the head of my daughter Fiona. Kanae's eyes met mine over my daughter's head, and she put a hand on it as though to ensure Fiona did not stop doing what she was doing: licking greedily, to judge by the noise.

"Come in, Ms. Pattinson," said Kanae. Fiona did give a jolt at that, but Kanae's hand kept her in place. "Keep going," she said, and after a moment the licking sounds resumed.

I had not moved from the doorway yet. I had no idea what to do. The worst had happened, it seemed to me, worse even than a surprise visit from Jason, from whom I at least knew to expect bad things. My daughter was being coerced into sex; and by a woman, which I couldn't help feeling made it all the more horrible, a greater betrayal than any predatory man could be.

"Fiona," I heard myself call out, still unable to move. "Are you all right?"

A foolish question, a nonsensical question even: it was obvious that she could not be. But Kanae gave a brief nod to the question she presumably saw in my daughter's eyes between her legs, and Fiona replied, in a voice that in any other set of circumstances would have compelled me to remind her not to talk with her mouth full,

"Yes, mom, I'm doing great."

Kanae's eyes met mine again, and her eyebrows raised. "Come in," she said again, rather more peremptorily. My heels clacked on the tile of the entranceway, and the door swung shut behind me. (Hours later, I would remember my phone, and dash outside; but not yet.)

"What do you think you are doing?" was the only thing I could think to say. I meant it furiously, but it came out stilted, like I was still getting used to using my voice after a long bout of laryngitis.

"Tutoring," said Kanae. "If you want your daughter to be ready for college, she should learn everything that matters." Fiona giggled, and there was a wetness in the giggle that made me feel sick to my stomach.

"You can't do this," I said helplessly. "It's not what I hired you for. You're hurting her, even if she doesn't know it."

Kanae's level gaze met mine once more through her owlish glasses frames, and her naturally mouéd lips made a real moué.

"You're wrong," she said. "Fiona is discovering her true self, and will be happy and successful as a result. You will do the same."

I felt like a pan of cold water had been thrown in my face, and staggered back reflexively.

"No!" I almost shrieked.

Fiona turned around to stare at me, but Kanae's hands firmly guided her head back to what a momentary unobscured glimpse enabled me to see was a hairless, brown-colored mons, slick with wetness and split between almost purplish lips. Then the sight disappeared, covered up once more by my daughter's open mouth.

I wanted to throw up. I had avoided all sexual contact for eleven years, and the sudden sight, sound, and -- I now realized -- smell of active sexual behavior was overwhelming me, and my breath was short. I flinched involuntarily, as though Jason might be behind me and about to pin me in his horrible grasping hands.

Kanae's face changed as she watched me, and she suddenly pushed Fiona's head away from her, and closed her legs, scooting back on the couch so that her glistening folds were buried in the triangle of her thighs. (I thought about the stain she would leave behind, and almost retched.) She patted the cushion next to her.

"Sit down," she said to me. "You are going to faint."

She was right; I could feel my knees starting to give. But Fiona had sprung to her feet at those words, and rushed to me -- with a sudden jolt of nausea, I had to turn my head away from the glistening moisture that covered her face, feeling ashamed to not be able to look my daughter in the eyes -- and guided me to the couch, where I more fell than sat down, Kanae on one side of me and my daughter on the other, stroking my hand anxiously.

"It's okay, mom, it really is," she was saying, but Kanae shook her head at her.

"Let me talk to her," she said, and Fiona subsided into silence, not the sulky or pained or resentful silence she might have answered me with, but a respectful silence, as though Kanae obviously knew best.

"Ms. Pattinson," said Kanae, putting her finger on my chin and guiding my head up to look her in the face instead of staring miserably into my lap, "I want to be very clear with you. Fiona is a free agent. She wanted our relationship to turn sexual, and I agreed with her. We are peers. Your daughter is an adult."

I stared at her numbly.

"Legally, yes.... " I began, and I heard Fiona suck in her breath in exasperation, but Kanae stilled her with a look. "But she's so young."

"She is old enough to know what she wants," said Kanae. "She wants me to treat her with authority, so I do. Isn't that right, Fiona?"

"Yes," came my daughter's voice, very small, embarrassed to admit it to me.

"What was that?" Kanae's inflection never changed.

"Yes, Kanae," said Fiona, and my breath caught in my throat at the adoration in her voice. It was an adoration I instinctively felt suspicious of; it reminded me sharply of how I had felt about Jason at the beginning, and before I knew I was doing it I had half raised up my hand as though to ward Kanae off.

She took it in her own hand, and held it gently, without force, lacing her fingers between mine. I shuddered at the touch, but didn't try to pull away.

"But as for you, Ms. Pattinson," said Kanae. "When our relationship turns sexual, it will not be as peers. You need something else."

I felt myself shake violently, and then enormous painful sobs, without tears, wrenched out of my throat and I doubled over. Every impulse in me screamed to fight, to run, to get away, that this was Jason all over again somehow, in the body of a tall quiet-faced Japanese girl, and that any further contact with her would end in being hurt exactly as he had hurt me, that she would cajole and flatter and beg at first, but end by taking, violently, with silent, methodical disregard.

But my hand gripped hers tightly instead of wrenching away, and her other hand rubbed my back as I regained my breathing, staring at the carpet between my knees, and I heard Fiona's bare feet patter back into the room with a glass of water I had not had the wherewithal to notice she was fetching.

I drank, and the ordinary, everyday coolness running down my throat recalled me to something closer to my normal self. I stammered out apologies through suddenly cluttered sinuses, ran through several kleenexes from a box which appeared on my lap, and dabbed at my eyes, which were curiously dry despite the sudden seizure of emotion. Slowly, I dared to look at Kanae again.

She gave a small smile, and something in me echoed Fiona's adoration. It was such a cute smile; I wished I had seen it earlier.

"You will be my sexual slave," Kanae's voice came calmly through the smile. "Your body will be mine to command, to control, to deny, to fulfill. You will worship me, and I will introduce you to a kind of pleasure you have never imagined."