A Complicated Kindness: Chapter Twenty-Four Summary & Analysis

For Ray’s birthday, Nomi buys a frog-shaped garden decoration and makes crêpes with syrup and cantaloupe. For dessert, she makes a cake which Trudie had taught her to make at the age of four. At that time, Nomi was sad about the recent death of her grandfather, Nicodemus. She wrote him a letter and threw it into the wind to get to Heaven. One day, Nicodemus wrote back, saying that he was very happy and that Nomi should play with her friends and not worry about him.

But a week later, Nomi found the original letter scrunched up by the fence, and realized that the one she received was fake. Trudie admitted that she wrote the letter, and told Nomi that nothing could reach Heaven on the wind because Heaven was always calm. To cheer Nomi up, Trudie taught her how to make chocolate cake. Now, Nomi loves feeling the wind on her face because it reminds her that she’s “in the world.”

That night, Nomi helps Travis paint his goat barn red. They take off their clothes and paint each other’s bodies red as well. Then they drive to The Comb’s trailer and hose each other off with purple gas, and swim in the pits, where the gas makes rainbows in the water. Travis lights little pools of gas on fire with his lighter, and Nomi enjoys the spectacle, the smell of stubble fires, and the hot wind on her face. She wonders how to remember a town “that’s not supposed to exist.”

When Nomi gets home, there’s a note from Ray asking if she has plans after graduation. Nomi passes out in bed and is still exhausted when she wakes up. She takes her French horn to Main Street, where she sits on it and smokes a cigarette. It’s getting unbearably hot and Nomi thinks that God hates her. Nomi takes the French horn to school and tries to return it in exchange for her $50 deposit, but the secretary tells her she can only claim the deposit if she graduates. Nomi storms out of the office.

Nomi doesn’t remember much of what happens in the afternoon. She picks some flowers with the intention of trading them for drugs, then passes out and wakes up in The Comb’s trailer. She notices that she’s lying on her own couch, which Ray has apparently sold to The Comb. The Comb’s cousin, Eldon, brings her a beer. Nomi says that she doesn’t have any money to buy drugs, and The Comb and Eldon offer to trade her some pot for the French horn. Nomi thinks about the offer, but eventually she just picks up her French horn and leaves.

Dragging her French horn, Nomi walks all the way back to her house, where Ray is intently examining a pile of coupons for fabric softener. He informs her that her driver’s test is tomorrow, and she tells him jokingly not to sell the car. Nomi starts looking around for something for dinner, but then realizes that the freezer is gone and they don’t have any food.

Instead of making dinner, Ray and Nomi decide to go to the Demolition Derby. Ray is the only person there wearing a suit and tie. They see lots of American cars driving toward East Village to watch The Mouth pretend to be a pioneer, “while the people of the real town sat in a field of dirt cheering on collisions.” On the way home, Nomi drives while Ray looks out the window, as if the landscape is entirely new to him.