Martin Cramer, Charles Grodin is a school principal, and his wife Sally Cramer, Marlo Thomas, a schoolteacher, find themselves stuck in a quiet rut on the Upper East Side. Five weeks after moving from Orchard Street, their apartment is still mostly unfurnished—Sally even jokes that she forgot the moving company’s name. The domestic routine feels brittle, and Sally toys with the idea of bringing Carlton, Larry B. Scott, a juvenile delinquent pupil of hers, into their home. Martin, steady and practical, reminds her that Carlton once stole from him, and the discussion quickly exposes a deeper ache: Sally longs for a child of their own, while Martin has grown distant from the idealistic person he once was. As the night wears on, Martin tells Sally to go to sleep, hinting at the widening gap between their dreams.
A week passes, and Sally’s world tilts further when she discovers she is pregnant. The revelation triggers a painful decision, and Sally initiates divorce proceedings, moving away to stay with a friend while she weighs her options about an abortion. In need of support, she phones Gordon, John McMartin, a man she met in the park who invites her to his apartment. Gordon presents a candid, uncomplicated life in which he is married with children and cannot obtain a divorce; the two agree they would be better off as friends. Across town, Martin seeks solace in a moment of passion with Nancy, Ann Wedgeworth, a neighbor who becomes entangled in his emotional weather.
Sally returns to the Orchard Street apartment only to confront a more troubling reality: Carlton has moved in a stash of stolen goods, using their place as a covert repository after having stolen keys from the building’s doorman, Devlin, Ian Martin. Carlton offers the loot in exchange for a passing grade, but Sally proposes a harder path—she would adopt Carlton if he goes straight. The tension intensifies as Sally discovers Martin’s fling when she spots Nancy wearing Martin’s sweatshirt, a finding that crystallizes the strain already tearing their marriage apart. Martin, meanwhile, revisits the old memories tied to their first date—broke into a closed Loew’s movie theater—and wanders back to the theatre, now transformed into a church, where a man named Perez, Santos Morales, reveals the new life that has supposedly replaced the one they once knew.
When the drama escalates, two police officers arrive to arrest Martin for breaking and entering, and the situation spirals as he bolts away. Back at the apartment, Sally seeks counsel from her father, Joe Kaminsky, Irwin Corey, asking him to accompany her to the abortion procedure. He refuses, but Sally’s impassioned argument about time—time as a thief—drives a pivotal revelation: Joe discloses that Sally is not 33 as she believed; she is actually 32, a year younger than she assumed because she had been enrolled in school early. Joe had been preserving that extra year as a birthday gift in his will, but he has decided that the moment has arrived for Sally to have it in full.
With the truth laid bare, Sally returns to the apartment only to find Devlin's body in the lobby after a night of violence and fear. She moves the body with two neighbors to the lobby couch and phoning the police, a moment that underscores the precarious line between duty and desperation. Martin finally returns, and the two face their options with a raw honesty that had long been missing from their marriage. Sally’s resolve falters as the weight of the situation presses in, while Martin’s desperate plea to salvage what remains—“we cannot break up until we decide who is at fault”—reaches Sally. In a turn of fear and longing, they share a kiss and choose to resist the pull of separation, deciding to run away together as the wail of police sirens grows closer.
In this intimate portrait of a couple navigating crisis, the film layers quiet frustrations with sudden shocks, painting a portrait of two people who cling to one another in the face of time’s unrelenting march. The story observes how a life built on shared memories, compromises, and unspoken truths can teeter on the edge of collapse, yet still find a fragile balance in a moment of renewed connection. Through Martin and Sally’s trajectory—from doubt to confrontation to a risky, hopeful denouement—the film examines the costs of aging, the longing for meaning, and the stubborn possibility that love can endure when two people choose to face their pasts together and rewrite their futures.
