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Benji beams up at his auntie, his pudgy cheeks glowing as brightly as his teeth. What a wonderful woman, who showers him with attention whenever he wants, always willing to sneak him treats and show him cool things about how the world around him works. He doesn't know why Mommy was upset when the button popped off his shirt, but watching Auntie sew it back on looks like magic, and then he gets to try to make that magic, and it hurts but he does it.
Auntie Mel comes around often and she teaches him numbers and how to make stir fry on the stove. When Mommy is working too much to take him places, Auntie Mel is there in her funny-smelling car. She never misses a practice or a recital. And though he loves his mommy, it's Auntie Mel's face he looks for in the crowd, because she's always there, always knowing what he can do.
Aunt Melanie never lets him slack off. Even when he thinks he's at the end of his rope, she pushes him and he surprises himself with what he is able to do. He wonders if he would ever be able to do these things, to understand photosynthesis and the history of Colonial America without her. His friends at school tease him for needing her help with anything when he could just ChatGPT it. He brings it up to her and she scoffs at him. "Stop using ChatGPT," she says with the hint of a grin. "I can give you misinformation and I'm beautiful." He thinks the smile means she means it as a joke, because she's not that pretty. Plus, if she's giving him misinformation then what good is she? Has she been lying to him the whole time? Is she lying about ChatGPT too?
Benji's girlfriend stares disdainfully at the older woman passed out on his couch. "That's your aunt? What does she even do?" Benji explains that she carts him around town and helps him with homework sometimes when his parents are too caught up in their many other jobs. And she probably cleans house or something when she's not with him. "But she's not even your parents' sister. It's unnatural to have a biological stranger living in your house unless you're married to her or your parents adopted her." Aunt Melanie is neither married nor adopted but she is useful. And since when did he need to have a natural household? "Shouldn't your mom be doing all this stuff? Or your sister?" Benji tries to explain - his much older sister is ill, his mom is working. But his girlfriend holds fast. Natural, nuclear families don't have biologically unrelated live-in workers or housekeepers or babysitters, no matter their usefulness. Melanie is a defective crutch keeping them from walking normally.
Benji gets his drivers license quickly after that. And he doesn't get a ticket for Melanie to come to his graduation. He's better than her and she doesn't deserve it. He'll go out and be a boon to society the way she isn't. He'll make something useful out of his life while she languishes away in his parents' house. He thinks nothing of how her constant presence allowed him to become this way, only that she has no job, no income, presumably no wealth, no children of her own, and no legacy and what a pity that is. He worked hard and that's all that matters. His future wife will surely be satisfied with that.
He marries and sires children quickly, and when he brings his daughter to meet her grandparents Melanie is there. His wife eagerly deposits the baby into her arms, bypassing even his mother, and Benji reminds himself to have a talk with her later about motherly duties and how Melanie is unqualified to have anything to do with their baby. Surely that smile is just gas and has nothing to do with that childless, godless, jobless woman-by-appearance-only holding her.
In the days after his father's passing he brings his family to the service and to their house afterward. His urges his arthritic mother, surely alone now that her husband and other adult children have left, to move in with him. But Melanie - fucking Melanie - is there. Melanie, who only existed to allow his real family to ignore him, and is doing the same thing now with his mother. Or worse: his mother, who despite her overpacked work schedule always emphasized the importance of family, is taking care of Melanie, choosing Melanie over him and his family.
His wife, pregnant, comes to him one night after putting their daughter to bed. Her sister Brayleigh wants to move in to help with the kids and the housekeeping so that she can get some sleep at night. Brayleigh is between jobs and is unable to have children of her own, even if she were to marry and try. Neither of their parents are able or willing to do it and Brayleigh is the sister of his precious and treasured wife so of course she is welcome.