Lillian Heckler Portfolio

july 24, 2023

Moira wrung out her hair and let it slap down against her back. She was covered in salt and sand and wanted desperately to take a shower. She tried to walk as lightly as she could, feeling weightless as water rushed under the soles of her feet and into the craters that formed in their wake. Sunlight caught her shoulders from behind, its beams following closely, warmly, like a friend from childhood.

She stared out at the beach and remembered a time when it was full of life, crawling with babies and couples and seagulls feeding on knocked-over sundaes. The ocean to the right of her, an expanse of blue, wide and wet, crowded by surfers and teenagers on boogie boards. Small planes flew overhead from time to time, dragging advertisements lazily behind:

         GET YOUR ISLAND ON: MALIBU RUM.

         SPREAD THE LOVE WITH SPF 15 OR ABOVE.

         TASTYKAKE: IT’S A SHORE THING.

The only aircrafts that passed through the sky since the Disruption were government-sponsored with missions in other parts of the East Coast. They hung low in the sky, teasing, but never dropping supplies to most New Jersey towns. B.T.A. certified “hubs” (cities that were heavily populated before the beginning, townships that could provide a census of over 500 people, campuses of large universities) received priority drops. The ports at beach towns couldn’t handle the size of the carriers, anyways.

Families used to visit annually for summer vacation, but now the beaches remained empty. No one stopped in Ocean City anymore, not even drifters. There wasn’t anyone to see.

———

When she was seventeen, Moira worked at the Fractured Prune on Asbury Avenue. She woke up at five o’clock in the morning, gathered her thick hair into a mountain on top of her head, and biked seven blocks down the street. She cleaned the displays and replaced the products in the storage fridge. On the days when Henry was late, she would fry the first round of dough. By the time they were puffed and ready for decoration, he would arrive, damp from a morning dunk under the waves, and flash her a crinkled-eye smile before planting a wet kiss against her cheek. His teeth always gleamed white against his tanned skin, his hair honey blonde and shaggy across his forehead.

He was nineteen, so he would finish the more important tasks of baking and frying while she refilled napkin holders and wiped down the windows. They worked quietly but never silently, the low chatter of a radio playing 70’s folk floating through the air. 

She thought a lot during those early hours before the first rush of customers began. She thought about the people in her classes, secretly pairing her first name with a few of their last. She planned outfits that she had no purpose for, ranked baby names that wouldn’t hold up with age, and repeated her dad’s surfing instructions over and over—he hadn’t left her with much else. 

Most days, Moira’s mind wandered to thoughts about her future. She considered where she might end up if she ever left town. She took herself down multiple career paths, from lawyer to painter, and weighed the pros and cons of each. But none of the plans felt as good as drifting on her back in the Atlantic Ocean.

She usually felt saved when the bell rang above the door, welcoming a new group of customers for her to cater to. It pulled her out of her head and forced her to be a component of a machine.

She liked the structure of it all. She liked working alone and meaning nothing to the people who handed her cash.

———

She stood in front of the donut shop now, a rusted bucket full of salt water in each hand. The paint on the shingled siding, once white, was stained an unpleasant shade of beige from four years under the scorching daylight without any upkeep. The shutters were mostly attached to the window frames, but the hinges screeched high and loud in the wind, like a group of hyenas stationed in front of their prey. Moira rested the buckets on the sidewalk in front of the building and pulled a rag from the back pocket of her shorts. It was mostly clean, stolen from the last house she broke into. She ran her fingers against the monogram embroidered into one corner.

When she looted her neighbors’ houses, Moira always tested to see if the doors were unlocked first. They usually weren’t, which disappointed her. She didn’t like smashing windows in or throwing herself against various door materials or sneaking around the properties more than she had to. She liked to let the town exist as it did before the Disruption, a time when community members cared about respecting privacy and when she would never imagine rooting through belongings that weren’t hers. Plus, each fixture that she destroyed only gave her more to restore.

Hence, she broke into one house every month just to collect canned goods, towels, washcloths, and the occasional clothing item if she found one worthy.

Moira started in the Gardens, which spanned from the Great Egg Harbor Inlet to North Street. She figured that it was best to start as far away from her house on 35th Street as possible. She had the most energy now for a longer commute, and if the Disruption continued for many more years, she’d much rather scavenge for mostly-spoiled food in the houses next to her than ones on the other side of the island.

Unlike the regimented, evenly distributed blocks on the rest of the island, the roads in the Gardens curved around one another. The area had once been the most sought-after on the island, with its historic buildings and distance from the boardwalk. Temporary visitors gathered in hordes toward the center of the island, so the beaches in the Gardens were essentially private and the families who lived in Ocean City year-round tended to cluster in the neighborhood.

The families that lived there also tended to be some of the wealthiest, which was positive for Moira’s yields. Their pantries overflowed with processed foods and the linen closets were well-stocked, so she could gather a month’s worth of supplies with ease.

She managed to survive on only the contents of the island’s grocery store for the first six months, eating all of the fresh foods first and the rest in small quantities at a time. B.T.A. shut off electricity access to all unnecessary locations before she could reach the frozen section. In those few months, she enjoyed taking herself to the store, grabbing a cart, and pretending like she had a list to follow. It helped her feel normal, imagining a family waiting at home for her.

It was harder to cope with the loneliness now that she had to climb into the houses of people she once respected. The echoing hallways, cleared of life, pierced her. With every window smashed, door broken, and lock dismantled, Moira felt herself unraveling.

The door to the Fractured Prune was unlocked, the same way she left it midway through the shift that wasn’t meant to be her last.

She scanned the shop with care, noticing what needed repairing. She made a mental list of the supplies that she needed to drag from Wallace True Value: purple paint, caulk, and a piece of molding for the far wall… She smiled to herself, proud to restore a place that meant so much to her so many years ago. Henry would be glad it didn’t all go to shit, after all.

———

The night they had to make the decision to stay or go—before the two bridges off of the island clogged from an influx of vehicles—he told her that she was making the wrong choice. She was firm in her stance: she didn’t want to leave the town. She didn’t believe that B.T.A. could sustain the thousands of people flocking to the hubs. She thought that it would be temporary, that the Disruption would lead, as the organization repeatedly said, to better times.

He said that she wouldn’t make it long, that people would raid the town. But what did any of them really know about what was to come?

“You aren’t violent enough, Mo,” he said, eyebrows furrowed. He was trying to convince Moira to hitch a ride in the blue pickup truck he bought for $4,000 off of Craigslist and drive west to one of the towns that the government listed at the bottom of a blank television screen.

“I can handle myself, Henry,” she huffed. She wanted him to take his hands off of her shoulders and leave the town behind, to stop treating her like the child she was when they started dating. He stood stiffly, gazing wetly into her eyes. “I need you to believe in me.”

Moira raised a hand to Henry’s cheek and brushed away a tear that escaped, holding his face in her palm. She felt his jaw pulse as he clenched and unclenched it. She tried to capture it, to relax his movement. She always wanted to love him as much as he loved her.

He covered her hand with his, placed a soft kiss against her mouth, and then turned away. He hopped into his truck and turned the key. She didn’t wait to see if he looked back.

Moira retreated into her house, nestled between Haven and Simpson Avenues. She turned off the lights, closed the blinds, and sank into her dad’s old leather recliner. She felt for the gun situated next to the chair.

And then she waited.

———

She never needed to use the gun, after all. Almost everyone had cleared out (at the insistence of the Board) and the few who stayed behind kept their space. They were older, three men and a woman, all without family and unwilling to give up their final years in their town. She had never seen much of them, though she figured she’d come across their houses at some point along her route.

Moira glided her rag against the smooth wooden countertop. She let her free hand drag behind and feel the glassy lacquer, now free of dust. There was a time when crumbs would stick to her sweaty palm as she brushed them off of the surface, the sickly smell of fried batter and sugary frosting floating through the room. There was a time when the bell above the door would ring, and someone would walk through and she would package their order with a zipped-on smile. The sign on the front window would buzz with electricity, population of the town aside. The register drawer would ding after she administered their change, and she wouldn’t mean anything to them.

She remembered liking the loneliness, the separation from everything. She liked knowing that not everything had to matter. Moira stared out the shop window and pretended to hear the hum of the neon nameplate.

Maybe she wouldn’t have minded meaning something to somebody walking through the door. Maybe just a little bit.