The ghost wives gossip about their husband while they work—they all live together in this large pink Mormon mansion with lion statues out front. Their husband is curiously absent. Maybe he has gone to heaven. Or perhaps, this is heaven, this huge heavenly house built for his enormous family, and he is not in Heaven, but in Hell. Hell, or absolute Outer Darkness, for forcing all of these women and their children together under one roof, always exhorting them to obey. They obeyed when asked to wash their petticoats, when asked to bake better bread, when asked to immediately come to bed. He has been gone for quite a long time. Who knows how long? Too long to simply be scouting around for another wife. Oil lamps line the long windowless hallway, emanating dim light. His wives are industrious women, busy as bees here in the Beehive state: this house, if not their heaven, ever their hive.

They work with what they have at hand, which is their hair, though it's no longer on their heads. Hair no longer on the head is now simply referred to as thread, fine thread, good enough for fancywork. They are women steeped in seriousness by their over-religious husband, a real zealot to be certain, the one-time prophet, seer, and revelator himself. They sit on their velvet settees in the parlor—where better for conversation?—making brown and gold wreaths from small flowers, flowers made from the fine thread, the once-hair on their now post-mortal heads. A wreath, or a dusty bouquet of brunette buds and ashy petals. Fanned out fern fronds, tightly wound tendrils. Some vines are dotted with soft white blossoms: the eldest wife's contribution. She was the eldest, but not the first, nor even the second;—the seventeenth.

If curls reappear, they pluck them from their lamp-lit foreheads. The blondes trade with the single redhead when they wish to produce a desert rose. They are used to limitations! A strict palette, few tools, no patron. There is no point to the work but to do the work, to try to make something while sitting on the settee, wistfully considering the fate of the man who once brought them there, supposedly by God's decree.

Once in a while, when there's a pause in the work (there's rarely a pause in the work), someone will boldly wonder aloud about his return. No one misses him, that's clear; it just seems possible he could reappear. As a man? As a ghost? As an angel with a smiting sword or a haunting heavenly host? Who knows? Who would suppose? He will not return, they are sure. They are sure.

But if he did: Would they tug at his white beard, pull a wavy lock from his nape? No, never.

Their husband is clumsy-fingered and impatient. He would undoubtedly bring a clock in to time the work, to track its efficiency, to ascertain the economic value of what they do, stuck in his house for eternity. No, he isn't coming back! They can rest assured! They can say whatever they want without risk.

Dull petals, wiry golden tendrils, stems streaked with gray. They poke and prod with their nasty brass hooks making puffed up sego lilies and crimped seagull's wings. Then they display their fine fancywork in gilt frames.

He's not coming back. What would he think of his nimble-fingered spouses, hairless and spectral? Would he praise their industriousness? Recoil at their ugliness? Throw out their years, decade, lifetime, eternity of work in a fit because he was not the one to think of it?

Would they poke him with their nasty brass hooks? They consider this, say nothing more of it, exchange inspired looks.

He will not return, and what a blessing! He said they were bound forever. But they are not bound to him—only to this house, only to each other. They are no longer required to be beautiful, no longer required to obey. Let everything they make be something inscrutable and strange. Let them be dull. Let them be ugly.

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