Katherine tells Michael she is taking the Pill

Katherine tells Michael she is taking the Pill on her birthday, after obtaining it without his knowledge from Planned Parenthood in New York. The disclosure brings her independent decision about contraception into their relationship: Michael learns both that she has acted and when she began, while her matter-of-fact explanation presents the choice as sensible rather than dramatic.

The Birthday Setting

The conversation comes after a birthday celebration Michael has planned for Katherine. They see Candide at the Paper Mill Playhouse and then have spaghetti at Mario's. Near the end of supper, Michael takes a small black jewelry box from his pocket and pushes it across the table as her present. Katherine is embarrassed by receiving a gift and asks what is inside. The gift creates a moment of suspense, but the scene turns away from the box before its contents are disclosed: Katherine opens her pocket-book and produces a package of pills instead.

The timing makes the disclosure part of an occasion organized around Michael's attention to Katherine. The day is his planned celebration for her, yet she redirects the intimate exchange by choosing what to reveal. Earlier, the two had sat in the den holding hands, listening to music, and talking; the birthday meal follows that shared closeness with a more consequential conversation. The account does not describe Katherine's choice of this moment as a strategy, but it establishes that she waits until her birthday, the following Friday, to tell him.

The Disclosure and Michael's Response

Katherine first holds up the package for Michael to see. He does not understand immediately. Only after a slow smile spreads across his face does he identify it as the Pill and ask whether she is taking it. Her brief affirmative answers confirm both that she has the medication and that she is using it. His next question, about when she started, shifts the exchange from recognition to the history of her decision.

Katherine says she got the pills on the day Michael became sick. When he asks how she managed to obtain them, she names Planned Parenthood in New York. The information arrives in stages: first the visible package, then confirmation that she is taking the Pill, then the date and place. This sequence makes the disclosure legible through the couple's conversation rather than through a prior explanation of Katherine's plans. Michael's initial confusion gives way to a smile, and his questions register surprise; the scene does not present him as opposing her decision.

Agency, Responsibility, and Aftermath

Katherine explains the choice by asking whether it makes sense, and Michael agrees that it does. Her explanation is concise, but its placement gives it weight: she has already gone to Planned Parenthood and obtained the pills before telling him. The scene therefore distinguishes her action from his discovery of it. Michael is included in the conversation only after Katherine has taken the practical step, and her account of where and when she obtained the medication answers his questions without transferring ownership of the decision to him.

The disclosure also links intimacy with responsibility. The exchange concerns contraception within Katherine and Michael's relationship, but it is not presented as a declaration that they have made a new sexual decision that evening. Instead, the focus stays on her use of the Pill and Michael's response to learning about it. The birthday setting, with its gift and shared supper, places that practical subject inside a tender occasion without making the two gestures equivalent: his present is offered to her, while the contraceptive decision is something she has arranged for herself.

There is no private conversation after the meal. Katherine had promised her parents that they would return early because they believed she was still recovering from the flu. Friends are still at the house when the couple gets back, leaving them no chance to be alone; they kiss goodnight on the front porch. The disclosure is thus followed not by an extended discussion but by a return to family circumstances and a brief goodbye. The scene closes with the fact of Katherine's decision shared, while the birthday evening offers no further account of what either of them will do next.