Chopped Chicken Liver from the Rue des Rosiers

Not through Proust or Camus, Colette or Chanel. Not even through French food. I became a Francophile early by way of Toni home permanents.

On Sunday nights in the days before cream rinse, my mother attempted to distract me as she wielded her comb through the chewing gum, wisteria blossoms, and weblike tangles that inhabited my hair. And she had to find a way to keep me cooperative through the longer process of applying vile-smelling lotion to my unfashionably straig