Colored Television (A GMA Book Club Pick): A Novel

“Let’s get out of this place, Jane,” he said, in the same soft voice. “Let’s leave this country. It’s not going to go well. You know that. It never has.”

The thing about being a woman, a mother, a wife, was that if you wanted to be any more than those things you had to hire another wife. Somebody had to be the wife in a family. Rich women got to pay somebody else to be them—a stunt double to make it look like they were doing everything well when, in fact, they were doing only the fun parts.

“Doogie Howser,

Jennifer Beals?”

gauche caviar

And just this morning they actually had morning sex. She didn’t know how it had happened exactly. The sky was only just beginning to lighten, and one of them had rolled over and touched the other in just the right way before they’d fully emerged from their dreams. They’d made love just like old times, a sweet, somnolent love that built into a kind

Jane set the cake down on the table in front of Ruby just as the birthday song reached its warbling crescendo. It was a cheap cake from Baskin-Robbins, Frozen-themed. She worried it was a tell that this house, even this shirt, didn’t belong to her. But maybe it was the opposite—maybe it made them seem more ensconced in this life, better, cooler—the

deracinated.

Lenny had always seen them as a pair of artists, which was the most feminist thing about him. He found her sexier the closer she came to reaching her full potential. He wanted them both to soar.