A Complicated Kindness: Chapter Twenty-Five Summary & Analysis

That night, Nomi and Travis sit in the park drinking until they accidentally smash their liquor bottle. They give each other haircuts and sleep until dawn. They climb up the feed mill fire escape and make out, hoping some farmer will see them and be scandalized. Nomi can see the sun rising and mist coming off the river; it feels like “the outdoor version of waking up to your mom making breakfast and your dad sitting confidently at the table with no plan to sell it.”

At home, Nomi shaves her entire head before going to school. Mr. Quiring asks if she’s having a nervous breakdown, and when Nomi tells him not to touch her, he throws her out of class. Nomi remembers being nine years old, going for a walk before school, and feeling happier than ever before in her life. When she went to school, she told her teacher that she was so happy she could fly or dance. The teacher said sharply that “life was not a dream” and “dancing is a sin.” For the first time, Nomi was aware that was alive and would someday be dead, and that after she dies there might be no afterlife. She realized that the world “is good enough” for her “because it has to be.”

Nomi walks to the school where Ray teaches and waves at him through the window. His desk is filled with flowers that his students have picked for him. She walks home, reads part of The Screwtape Letters, and falls asleep. When she wakes up, she finds a strange woman lying on the living-room floor. Ray explains that she’s a state inspector who collapsed while visiting the school. The woman wakes up and introduces herself as Edwina, and they all have tea on the porch. When Edwina discovers their last name is Nickel, she asks if they’re related to Trudie, whom she knows from performing musicals together many years ago. Nomi is shocked to find out that Trudie ever did theater, but Ray doesn’t want to talk about it, and soon offers to drive Edwina home.

Nomi walks to the museum village and makes out with Travis in the barn until his fake wife from the museum comes to find him. Nomi sits on the forge to smoke a cigarette, and an American teenager strikes up a conversation with her. Nomi tells him where to buy drugs and asks how he likes being an American. Then his parents come to collect him and he leaves. Nomi turns to watch some men from the town slaughtering a pig in a historically accurate manner. Some tourists are watching in evident disgust, telling their children not to get too close.

That night, Travis picks Nomi up for a drive. They have sex, and Nomi says in retrospect that it might have gone better if she wasn’t “drunk, depressed, and jealous.” Travis tells her to “move with me,” and she thinks he’s inviting her to Montreal, but he just wants her to move with his body. On the way home, Nomi starts crying for no reason, and slams the truck into reverse while driving 50 miles per hour.